Internet: Rewiring the Brain? Or Just Evolving?

A recent article in Wired Magazine by Author Nicholas Carr: The Web Shatters Focus, Rewires Brains is talking about the impact of the Internet and the World Wide Web on our abilities to focus our brains.  The point of the article is that, as we access the Internet to gain information, we’re shattering our abilities to retain that information.

The impact of Internet access on our minds is being studied at a number of institutions and the outcome of these studies is still inconclusive and mixed.  For instance, one study at UCLA resulted in an article entitled “First-time Internet users find boost in brain function after just one week”

The UCLA team worked with 24 neurologically normal volunteers between the ages of 55 and 78. Prior to the study, half the participants used the Internet daily, while the other half had very little experience. Age, educational level and gender were similar between the two groups.

 Study participants performed Web searches while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans, which recorded the subtle brain-circuitry changes experienced during this activity. This type of scan tracks brain activity by measuring the level of cerebral blood flow during cognitive tasks.

After the initial brain scan, participants went home and conducted Internet searches for one hour a day for a total of seven days over a two-week period. These practice searches involved using the Internet to answer questions about various topics by exploring different websites and reading information. Participants then received a second brain scan using the same Internet simulation task but with different topics.

The first scan of participants with little Internet experience demonstrated brain activity in regions controlling language, reading, memory and visual abilities, which are located in the frontal, temporal, parietal, visual and posterior cingulate regions, researchers said. The second brain scan of these participants, conducted after the practice Internet searches at home, demonstrated activation of these same regions, as well as triggering of the middle frontal gyrus and inferior frontal gyrus — areas of the brain known to be important in working memory and decision-making. 

Other research is less positive, and inconclusive about the impact. Yet Carr’s perspective about the Internet is pretty clear:

The Internet is an interruption system. It seizes our attention only to scramble it. There’s the problem of hypertext and the many different kinds of media coming at us simultaneously. There’s also the fact that numerous studies—including one that tracked eye movement, one that surveyed people, and even one that examined the habits displayed by users of two academic databases—show that we start to read faster and less thoroughly as soon as we go online. Plus, the Internet has a hundred ways of distracting us from our onscreen reading. Most email applications check automatically for new messages every five or 10 minutes, and people routinely click the Check for New Mail button even more frequently. Office workers often glance at their inbox 30 to 40 times an hour. Since each glance breaks our concentration and burdens our working memory, the cognitive penalty can be severe.

Brain Paradigms: Mechanical to Electronic

When my son brought this article to my attention, I immediately thought of a number of readings and experiences in my own past.  For instance, in the 1980s when personal computers were just starting to gain wide use, the popular paradigm of how the mind work seemed to be changing from a “mechanistic”, Rube Goldberg, chain-reaction-style model to an electrical circuit model.

People were obsessed with the concept of AI, and thought that computers were becoming a threat because they removed some aspect of control by obfuscating normal processes.  One of the most famous AI programs at that time was “Eliza” which purported to imitate a conversation with an artificial intelligence. (Click here to talk to "Eliza".)

The fact that we’re now rapidly embracing another generation of technology (Internet) with the use of evermore embedded mechanisms causes me to wonder: How did our meager brains survive before the Internet?

Methods of Embracing the World that We Experience

This thought was on my mind last night as I was looking at Google’s Sky Map and comparing this to a navigation map made of sticks that Polynesians used to find their way from island to island in a trackless sea.

Google uses GPS satellites and the GPS coordinates of the querying device (cell phone) to provide a view of the stars above.  The Polynesian map used sticks to represent  stars, currents, and wave formations to identify where one might be while crossing the Pacific in an outrigger canoe. 

Would Carr consider Google’s Sky Map a possible threat to the ancient practices of Polynesian navigation? Or is it technology itself that is concerning him, as society shifts its focus to newer methods of understanding?  Did the use of Polynesian stick maps change the brain function of ancient navigators? 

Probably.  

Memory Palaces: Soft-Wired Brains

How the brain functions may not be something that is hard-wired anyway.  Consider that for thousands of years humanity transferred knowledge from generation to generation merely by word-of-mouth.  In fact, one could argue that throughout the human experience gaining knowledge required that the brain’s neurons be reorganized and reoriented to be able to grasp the perceived reality and transform that understanding into mechanisms for survival.  Whether the mechanisms for obtaining knowledge was external or internal will perhaps forever remain controversial.

For instance, one of the techniques used in ancient Greece was called “loci”.  The “Method of loci” was an eidetic technique by which an individual associated a fact, experience, or memory with a location.  In this practice, one first conceives of a place with numerous familiar locations – imaginary or real – where one can visit in one’s mind.  This is often referred to as a “Memory Palace”.  The technique requires the person to virtually walk into this imaginary place/room/etc. and populate it with other objects: tables, chairs, trees, etc.  The technique’s first step is to thoroughly familiarize one’s self with this location, until the mind can navigate the location and remember every object that is contained in each “room.”

When the time comes to actually commit a thought or experience to memory, one then walks through the location and virtually places the memory beside one of the objects within that room.  This act of mental association “fixes” the memory by associating the object with the memory of the thing one wishes to remember. 

Using the method of loci permitted scholars to store immense amount of information over time – much as the retelling of a story reveals an experience that may long ago have been forgotten.  The brain, in this model, is not a mechanism, nor a circuit, nor a network, but a vast storage area composed of rooms or other locations, each containing virtual objects that are associated with memories or stories of experience. 

How does it work?

A YouTube video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NROegsMqNc demonstrates this technique in memorizing random words.  Watch it. It’s fun!

So, is the Internet rewiring the human brain?  I hope so!  And in my opinion what we are doing is using the Cloud as a vast, communal memory palace.  Devising new methods of navigating it is now the effort that technology is addressing through various devices. 

Is it good or bad?

I guess we’ll find out.