Shereen Ali

Are com­put­ers and cy­ber­space chang­ing our brains?

In a world of ubiq­ui­tous tech­nol­o­gy, when many youth seem to have a clos­er re­la­tion­ship with their cell­phones, tablets, com­put­ers or video games than with their ac­tu­al flesh-and-blood fam­i­ly and friends, it's not such a far-fetched ques­tion.On April 29, neu­ro­sci­en­tist Su­san Green­field talked about pre­cise­ly this: the im­pacts of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy not on­ly on our be­hav­iour and lifestyles, but al­so on how our brains them­selves (es­pe­cial­ly chil­dren's young, grow­ing brains) may be af­fect­ed.

Green­field, who is a British sci­en­tist, writer, broad­cast­er and mem­ber of the House of Lords, was in Trinidad for the Bo­cas Lit Fest at which she gave a fas­ci­nat­ing talk on her re­cent­ly pub­lished book, Mind Change, on Wednes­day morn­ing at the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce build­ing in West­moor­ings.

Pub­lished in Au­gust 2014 by Ran­dom House, Mind Change dis­cuss­es the all-per­vad­ing tech­nolo­gies that now sur­round us, and from which we de­rive in­stant in­for­ma­tion, con­nect­ed iden­ti­ty, di­min­ished pri­va­cy and ex­cep­tion­al­ly vivid here-and-now ex­pe­ri­ences.In Green­field's view, these things are cre­at­ing a new en­vi­ron­ment with vast im­pli­ca­tions, be­cause our minds are phys­i­cal­ly adapt­ing: be­ing rewired.

What could this mean? Are we be­com­ing slaves to the ma­chine? Do we need to take a step back, and learn how to best use dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies, be­fore they turn us all in­to un­der­de­vel­oped, near-autis­tic, in­stant-grat­i­fi­ca­tion junkies? How can we use our new tech­no­log­i­cal mi­lieu to cre­ate bet­ter al­ter­na­tives and more mean­ing­ful lives?These and many oth­er is­sues were raised in Green­field's stim­u­lat­ing hour-long talk.

Hu­mans: the supreme adapters

She be­gan by ob­serv­ing that hu­mans adapt to their en­vi­ron­ments very well. "Any­thing you do re­peat­ed­ly will lit­er­al­ly leave its mark on your brain," she said.Can the men­tal process of think­ing ac­tu­al­ly change the phys­i­cal brain it­self? She cit­ed a 1995 ex­per­i­ment by Pas­cual-Leone in which one (con­trol) group of peo­ple sim­ply looked at a pi­ano for five days, com­pared to an­oth­er group who ac­tu­al­ly learned to play it a lit­tle bit, com­pared to a third group who just imag­ined they were play­ing it.

The first group showed no change in their brain scans. But the last two pro­duced ob­serv­able and sim­i­lar changes in scans of their brain ac­tiv­i­ty–with the last group be­ing es­pe­cial­ly as­ton­ish­ing, she said–sug­gest­ing that the more you think (or imag­ine), the more you can af­fect or pos­si­bly change your own brain ac­tiv­i­ty, and brain growth. It seems the brain is sen­si­tive to not on­ly the ex­ter­nal en­vi­ron­ment, but to any­thing that hap­pens, or that you are mak­ing hap­pen.

"We can­not, can­not, can­not draw a dis­tinc­tion be­tween men­tal and phys­i­cal," said the pro­fes­sor. "Every thought you have, has some kind of phys­i­cal ba­sis."

What is think­ing?

She asked: "What is think­ing, then? What is a men­tal event?"To an­swer this, she con­trast­ed a thought with an emo­tion. She said an emo­tion of­ten hap­pens in the mo­ment, where­as a thought hap­pens in a se­quence of steps, and ends in a dif­fer­ent place from where you start­ed. This lin­ear ac­tion re­quires time to com­plete, she said.

Her an­swer to "What is think­ing?" was a quote from an­oth­er sci­en­tist, who once said: "Think­ing is move­ment con­fined to the brain."

Whether a per­son is learn­ing a mu­si­cal in­stru­ment, jug­gling, swot­ting for an ex­am or learn­ing a new lan­guage, their ex­tra men­tal ef­forts have ac­tu­al phys­i­cal ef­fects on their brains; the branch­ing net­works of con­nec­tions be­come stronger, thick­er and more com­plex, and you can see this in scans of the brain'stiny branch­ing net­works, she said. By in­creas­ing its branch­es, the brain is in­creas­ing its sur­face area, mak­ing it eas­i­er for brain cells to com­mu­ni­cate with oth­er brain cells, she said.

Green­field spoke of the tem­po­ral lin­ear­i­ty of peo­ple's life sto­ries, and posit­ed that your iden­ti­ty is in ef­fect the re­sult of the con­nec­tions you make in your brain cells as a re­sult of your own unique ex­pe­ri­ences.

Dan­gers of too much cy­ber­space

She said the rich, mul­ti­fac­eted on­line world was be­com­ing a par­al­lel, even es­capist way of liv­ing which has the po­ten­tial to af­fect chil­dren neg­a­tive­ly–es­pe­cial­ly chil­dren who spend too much time on­line in­stead of tak­ing the time to play, make dif­fer­ent kinds of re­la­tion­ships with re­al peo­ple, and ex­er­cise their imag­i­na­tions through di­verse ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing read­ing.

Re­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion in three di­men­sions is bet­ter than screen or two-di­men­sion­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion, she said, be­cause words form on­ly ten per cent of any com­mu­ni­ca­tion. The rest is com­mu­ni­cat­ed through eye con­tact, body lan­guage, voice (tone, rate and vol­ume), pheromones, and phys­i­cal con­tact–none of which is avail­able on Face­book, she said.And if you don't re­hearse these as­pects of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, you won't get good at them, she said.

She then cit­ed a link be­tween poor com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills and autis­tic-like be­hav­ior in youth–who in to­day's world, have a much high­er ex­po­sure to the in­ter­net. She al­so cit­ed a study where a group of pre-teens had all their dig­i­tal de­vices tak­en away for five days, were tak­en to an out­door camp, and saw an im­prove­ment in their com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills as a re­sult. The brain will in­ces­sant­ly adapt, she said.

She made the point that some­times, when lit­tle chil­dren make up their own games–even with an old card­board box–these games are much bet­ter than pas­sive screen games, be­cause in the re­al games, they are ex­er­cis­ing their imag­i­na­tions, and try­ing on dif­fer­ent iden­ti­ties.

Chil­dren must learn to think

She said that a whole mid­dle part of de­vel­op­ment is be­ing skipped–the part that in­volves learn­ing to ac­tu­al­ly think–when we sim­ply park chil­dren in front of screens.

Vi­o­lence in videogames can be es­pe­cial­ly bad, en­cour­ag­ing ex­ces­sive lev­els of the chem­i­cal dopamine, she said. High dopamine damp­ens down ac­tiv­i­ty in the pre-frontal cor­tex, she said. When this part of the brain un­der-func­tions, we re­act emo­tion­al­ly rather than cog­ni­tive­ly, she said, go­ing for sen­sa­tion rather than thought. In video games, we of­ten don't think, we just re­act. And the thrill of the mo­ment trumps the con­se­quences of our ac­tions, she said. She not­ed that the pre­frontal cor­tex­es of teenage brains are still de­vel­op­ing.

On use of so­cial me­dia, she com­ment­ed that down­load­ing every sec­ond of con­scious­ness on­to Twit­ter or Face­book is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a good thing, as this form of self-pre­sen­ta­tion can be nar­cis­sis­tic and leaves us too vul­ner­a­ble to oth­ers' opin­ions. She sug­gest­ed that it can al­so make for rather shal­low ne­go­ti­a­tions of iden­ti­ty.

Facts are not knowl­edge

Hav­ing ac­cess to lots of facts via the in­ter­net is not the same as hav­ing knowl­edge, she said, be­cause knowl­edge in­volves un­der­stand­ing, and the abil­i­ty to har­ness ab­stract con­cepts and re­late var­i­ous iso­lat­ed facts to make use­ful con­nec­tions of sig­nif­i­cance.She even quot­ed Er­ic Schmidt, the chair­man of Google, who ap­par­ent­ly once said that sit­ting down and read­ing a book is the best way to de­vel­op un­der­stand­ing and imag­i­na­tion (rather than, say, surf­ing the net).

Tech­nol­o­gy, she sug­gest­ed, should pro­voke in­di­vid­ual ful­fil­ment rather than be a sub­sti­tute for it.And in a short ques­tion and an­swer ses­sion af­ter her talk, she had this sim­ple ad­vice for par­ents, to coun­ter­act all those video games and elec­tron­ic screens chil­dren are ex­posed to these days: eat to­geth­er more of­ten as a fam­i­ly; en­cour­age your chil­dren to go out­side and play; and read of­ten to your chil­dren.