More Evidence That Web Exposure Rewires Us

[cross-posted from /Mind]

UCLA neuroscientist Gary Small is on the lecture circuit promoting his new book, with the immediately-sounding-out-of-date-title, iBrain. However, his research seems to corroborate the anecdotal arguments I have been making for years, that exposure to the web's tools is changing our cognition.

[from Are You a 'Digital Native?' by Jeneen Interlandi ]

Is technology changing our brains? A new study by UCLA neuroscientist Gary Small adds to a growing body of research that says it is. And according to Small's new book, "iBRAIN: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind," a dramatic shift in how we gather information and communicate with one another has touched off an era of rapid evolution that may ultimately change the human brain as we know it. "Perhaps not since early man first discovered how to use a tool has the human brain been affected so quickly and so dramatically," he writes. "As the brain evolves and shifts its focus towards new technological skills, it drifts away from fundamental social skills."

The impact of technology on our circuitry should not come as a surprise. The brain's plasticity—it's ability to change in response to different stimuli—is well known. Professional musicians have more gray matter in brain regions responsible for planning finger movements. And athletes' brains are bulkier in areas that control hand-eye coordination. That's because the more time you devote to a specific activity, the stronger the neural pathways responsible for executing that activity become. So it makes sense that people who process a constant stream of digital information would have more neurons dedicated to filtering that information. Still, that's not the same thing as evolution.

To see how the Internet might be rewiring us, Small and colleagues monitored the brains of 24 adults as they performed a simulated Web search, and again as they read a page of text. During the Web search, those who reported using the Internet regularly in their everyday lives showed twice as much signaling in brain regions responsible for decision-making and complex reasoning, compared with those who had limited Internet exposure. The findings, to be published in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, suggest that Internet use enhances the brain's capacity to be stimulated, and that Internet reading activates more brain regions than printed words. The research adds to previous studies that have shown that the tech-savvy among us possess greater working memory (meaning they can store and retrieve more bits of information in the short term), are more adept at perceptual learning (that is, adjusting their perception of the world in response to changing information), and have better motor skills.

One interpretation is that the medium of the Web contributes to a deeper sort of critical thinking, involving more of the 'executive function' that balances various sorts of cognitive centers.

A reassuring aspect of recent research into the worlds of digital natives is that an obsession with the web does not mean a turning away from social relationships. On the contrary:

a 2005 Kaiser study found that young people who spent the most time engaged with high-technology also spent the most time interacting face-to-face, with friends and family. And as Small himself points out, digital natives and digital immigrants can direct their own neural circuitry—reaping the cognitive benefits of modern technology while preserving traditional social skills—simply by making time for both.

Or it may well be that the circuits we are stimulating -- those higher centers in the brain that are firing -- may involve our social perceptions deeply. After all, the source of information on the web is not a disembodied Big Brother or mass media outlet, but is generally social: a blog post by a specific thinker, email from a friend, Facebook messages from a classmate, or Twittering with an extended network of acquiantances. Perhaps we gain by using the lens of our social involvement to illuminate the world, and bring it into a closer focus?

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