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Some experts (including my wife !) believe "excessive use of the Internet, cellphones and other technologies can cause us to become more impatient, impulsive, forgetful and even more narcissistic " .. well, who am I to disagree ! there are too many tamper-proof evidences !!
"When you have 500 pictures from your vacation in your Flickr account (and Picasso or Shutterfly or Facebook or god knows how many online accounts)., as opposed to five pictures that are really meaningful, does that change your ability to recall the moments that you really want to recall?” .. hmmm, may be !
There are some interesting articles on NYtimes recently published about this use vs mis-use. There is a vibrant debate among scientists over whether technology’s influence on behavior and the brain is good or bad, and how significant it is.
“More and more, life is resembling the chat room,” says Dr. Elias Aboujaoude, director of the Impulse Control Disorders Clinic at Stanford. “We’re paying a price in terms of our cognitive life because of this virtual lifestyle.” Tests at Stanford.. showed multitaskers tended to search for new information rather than accept a reward for putting older, more valuable information to work.
Also the research results seem to illustrate an age-old conflict in the brain, one that technology may be intensifying. A portion of the brain acts as a control tower, helping a person focus and set priorities. Where as more primitive parts of the brain, like those that process sight and sound, demand that it pay attention to new information, bombarding the control tower when they are stimulated. So the lower-brain functions alert humans to danger, like a nearby lion, thus overriding goals like building a hut. But in the modern world, the chime of incoming e-mail can override the goal of writing a business plan or playing catch with the children.
On the otherhand, other research shows computer use has neurological advantages. In imaging studies, Dr. Small, a psychiatrist at the University of California, Los Angeles, observed that Internet users showed greater brain activity than nonusers, suggesting they were growing their neural circuitry. At the University of Rochester, researchers found that players of some fast-paced video games can track the movement of a third more objects on a screen than nonplayers. They say the games can improve reaction and the ability to pick out details amid clutter.
“The bottom line is, the brain is wired to adapt,” said Steven Yantis, a professor of brain sciences at Johns Hopkins University. “There’s no question that rewiring goes on all the time,” he added. But he said it was too early to say whether the changes caused by technology were materially different from others in the past.
Now here's the fun portion of this. Take these quick online tests based on this Stanford study to see how your brain is getting adapted.
Test Your Focus Measure your ability to filter out distractions- wasn't that bad .. aced it !
Multitasking : Test How Fast You Juggle Tasks Measure your cost of switching between different tasks .. ouch, that hurt, no need to say my score here !! (can't afford another tamper-proof evidence for my loved ones)
Now's time to put that laptop down.. time to go play ! On that note, my Second half-marathon is coming up this weekend... i-run !!
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