Grey Matter

Is it possible that the new unparalleled access to advanced technology is actually making humans more stupid? New studies suggest that it might. And excuse me for my innate pessimism but it seems very likely to me.

How many adults could still joust with a quadratic polynomial if necessary or solve a simple theorem in analytic geometry? My own mathematical skills have diminished dramatically since I came to rely on calculators. I have to force myself to be my own spellchecker and not to rely on a simple right click. We are being smothered by the new technology and our cognitive powers are quickly becoming vestigial.

Now a new book entitled "The shallows, what the internet is doing to our brains" by Nicholas Carr argues that web technology is having structural and adverse physiologic effects on our brain function. The fact that London cabdrivers who rely on satellite navigation systems are losing their own internal mapping functions and previously vast memories is born out by new brain imaging techniques.

Mr. Carr illustrates the problem by describing an " experiment where a puzzle needed to be solved using a computer program. One half of participants were given a 'good' program - it gave hints, was intuitive and generally helped the user to their goal.


The other half took on the same puzzle, but with software which offered little to make the task easier.


"The people who had the weakest software, who had to struggle with the problem, learned much more than the people with the most helpful software," Mr Carr explained.


"Months later - the people who had the unhelpful software actually could remember how to do the puzzle, and the people with the helpful software couldn't."


Mr Carr says that this simple experiment could suggest that as computer software becomes easier to use, making complicated tasks easier, we risk losing the ability to properly learn something - in effect "short-circuiting" the brain.


"When you think about how we're coming to depend on software for all sorts of intellectual chores, for finding information, for socialising - you need to start worrying that it's not giving us, as individuals, enough room to act for ourselves."""The most interesting [study] had people who hadn't had experience with the web begin to use Google, for just an hour a day, and begin searching and surfing."


The results showed how even just a small amount of use triggered varying patterns of brain activity.


"On the one hand, a lot of their decision-making parts of their brain were activated which means it can help keep a mind sharp, for instance, as we get older.


"But it also seemed to indicate the kind of patterns of activity that would make it hard for you to concentrate. If you're always solving problems and making decisions you can't have the calm mind you get when you read a book."


The key to making us concentrate, Mr Carr suggests, is perhaps to make tasks difficult - a theory which flies in the face of software designers the world over who constantly strive to make their programs easier to use than the competition.


This book, which I have not yet read, sounds very interesting to me. I'm not a television viewer but enjoy listening to classic radio programs. Your brain can fill in the visual dots. Another reason that I do not like books on tape. My brain can pull up the accents and human peculiarities out of its own image bank when I am reading. We are all suffering from too much information. Yet our cognitive powers and our ability to reason are diminishing.


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There is a lot of news out on the brain front. Brain "Training" activities do not work, according to a new english study. 
The brain training experiment was launched in September 2009 and is by far the largest ever clinical trial of computer-based brain training. 11,430 adults across the UK followed a six-week training regime, completing computer-based tasks on the BBC’s website designed to improve reasoning, memory, planning, visuospatial skills and attention. Each person’s brain function was measured before and after training in four computer-based tests sensitive to changes in brain function, developed by scientists at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge. The results showed no evidence that the benefits of playing brain training games transfer to other mental skills. People who completed computer-based training exercises did improve at the games, but these improvements were simply due to practise and were no help to them on tasks on which they had not trained, even when they tapped into similar areas of the brain as those used during training.

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A new Alzheimer's study comes to the contra intuitive conclusion that mental exercise can speed up the decline in patients with the disease.

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Multitaskers and gamers rejoice.  A new study from the University of Rochester that shows that video gamers make faster, accurate decisions. Cognitive scientists from the University of Rochester have discovered that playing action video games trains people to make the right decisions faster. The researchers found that video game players develop a heightened sensitivity to what is going on around them, and this benefit doesn't just make them better at playing video games, but improves a wide variety of general skills that can help with everyday activities like multitasking, driving, reading small print, keeping track of friends in a crowd, and navigating around town.


Which makes me recall a study conducted some years ago by the army that showed that squeamish soldiers could be trained to dramatically increase their willingness to pull the trigger and fire a weapon at an actual human being if they first went through enough simulated video game training. Perhaps it desensitized them or reduced it to a game.

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Viewing internet pornography is also thought to have a major structural effect on the neurologic system according to research by Dr. Gary Lynch. And another book out on the relationship between porn viewing and both violence against women and an inability to carry on intimate relationships.

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Shawn from Thailand sends me a link to this very cool blog, danariely.com.  The site OKCupid charts the correlation between smart phone usage and promiscuity. Apparently you iphone users are pretty randy.

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Ariely also has some interesting stuff on operant conditioning and reinforcement. Which is coincidental because I have been studying the phenomenon this week. I was reading the book Magnificent Obsessions and there was an interview with collector Bill Stern about intermittent reinforcement, something first postulated I believe by B.F. Skinner. If an antique dealer goes out and finds a treasure every day, it becomes too easy, he gets bored and he loses interest. With intermittent reinforcement, maybe the dealer only finds the pearl in the oyster every sixth day. This keeps the interest and mania up.


The interesting thing that Skinner discovered about intermittant reinforcement and maybe one of Skinner's most important discoveries was that behavior that is reinforced intermittently is much more difficult to extinguish than behavior that is reinforced continuously. "This is why many of our student's undesirable behaviors are so difficult to stop. We might be able to resist a child's nagging most of the time, but if we yield every once in a while, the child will persist with it." (Crain, 187) Therefore, when we begin to teach a desired behavior it is best to begin with continuous reinforcement, but if you wish to make a desired behavior last it is best to switch to an intermittent schedule of reinforcement.

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Holy Edmund Muskie! Scientists have found differences in the left wing and right wing brain.
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That other people's opinions matter.
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Extremists are more willing to share their views than people with moderate opinions, according to this study.
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That primitive aborigines may indeed possess a sixth sense.
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Rhesus monkeys show permanent damage from methamphetamine four years after a single application.
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Military is still failing to diagnose brain injuries in our servicemen, the signature injury for the Iraq and Afghani conflict.
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Super caffienated mice have an elephant's memory.
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And that reading arabic isn't easy.