Slashdot Mirror
Internet Use Can Be Good For the Brain
ddelmonte writes "This Washington Post article examines a test conducted at UCLA.
The test had two groups, young people who used the Internet, and older people who had never been online. Both groups were asked to do Internet searches and book reading tasks while their brain activity was monitored.
'We found that in reading the book task, the visual cortex — the part of the brain that controls reading and language — was activated,' Small said.
'In doing the Internet search task, there was much greater activity, but only in the Internet-savvy group.'
He said it appears that people who are familiar with the Internet can engage in a much deeper level of brain activity.
'There is something about Internet searching where we can gauge it to a level that we find challenging,' Small said.
In the aging brain, atrophy and reduced cell activity can take a toll on cognitive function. Activities that keep the brain engaged can preserve brain health and thinking ability.
Small thinks learning to do Internet searches may be one of those activities."
I suppose young people have a perfectly fine excuse for our Internet addictions: We're just making use of our brains! I do wonder whether older people would yield increased brain activity similar to younger users when studied over a period of increased Internet usage.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
. . . when they announce that next week, we're all set!
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
i found my attention span has gone to dogs since the advent of the internet and each year it gets worse
Steve Hawking ain't got nothing on me; I must be a genius!
(You have to appreciate me calling myself a genius in the same sentence that has the word "ain't", and a double negative.)
Maybe the non-internet savvy people know that in order to get the most out of the internet, you can't treat it like a book? That seems like an obvious conclusion to me. If you treat an internet search like a puzzle to be solved (which anyone who searches the internet regularly does), then you aren't just reading what's on the page. That's just one of the obvious alternate conclusions one could jump to. But then, that was also just based on the summary, which is almost never an accurate representation of the actual article or study.
hay i bin usin ze intarnuts all my life!
It shows!
Seriously, if i could draw a graph of _my_ internet usage vs IQ, there'd be a strong correlation between lowering of IQ as the internet usage increased.
Google has destroyed my memory and interest in trivia and other 'small' interesting things in life.
When someone mentions something, instead of asking them more about it, all i think is "how fast can i get on the internet to google this stuff up? "
I have even lost appetite for non-intellectual stuff. My patience is so low (thanks to 0.002 second answers to queries) , i cant sit through a movie i find interesting without reading its wiki page and then abandoning the movie.
Damn you internet!
You mean that young brains, when confronted with a familiar, engaging audio-visual medium stimulated more of the brain than when they tested elderly subjects who had essentially no concept of the depth of information that was available in that medium.
I am shocked with this discovery. Shocked, I tell you. We should spend much more on this research - maybe with animals - to determine the extent of this effect. Do you suppose these guys produce a newsletter?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
...this study shows that an older person uses less brute-force brainpower than a younger person to perform the same task.
Business/App ideas are like arseholes: everyone's got one, they're mostly shit, but very rarely they contain a diamond
I would say thats accurate i suffered a sub arachnoid hematoma which is a major brain hemmorhage. During my long recovery my family purchased a computer. i have been the i.t. support i had an iq of 120 before anuerysm now its 126. I credit my rise from babbling moron to internet savvy on the range of tasks that i have to keeping up with being computer admin for the family.also one of the joys of my days is coming here to \. and trying to understand the complex world of internet technology and of course the high browed humor here.Which at times takes a rhodes scholar to understand. thank you all
Does the research also mention something about playing tower defense flash games on the internet?
given the amount of shit google spits out to any given search i'd say it's accurate. the internet savy person knows they need to think deeply before clicking on a link, where a normal person is just using pot luck and not thinking about it.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Seriously though. Of course someone who is younger and has used the internet before is going to be more interested at sitting in front of a computer, therefore increased brain stimulation. Do the same thing with a old guy that likes to play chess and a young guy that only likes to play flash based dress up doll games and see if the opposite doesn't happen.
"I don't have to think. I only have to do it. The results are always perfect, but that's old news." - Meat Puppets
I think that's what the internet using group is doing... and that is why a lot more activity was detected.
Test subject: Must not get caught browsing for porn... must do it in a casual way.
I think it's because Internet users needed to use more of their brains, having less to go around. But then I use the Internet too, so what do I know?
Reduce, reuse, cycle
picking it up now will do her no good. Her brain has already become as pruny as the prunes she eats.
Me, I'm a gamer and will be until my last breath. Gaming is a high-level activity and will keep me sharp.
They're using their grammar skills there.
"I'm exercising my visual cortex!" *fapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfap*
So by my estimation it will make you n times smarter than the Library of Congress ever could.
There are so many missing controls and unaccounted variables in this study that it makes my brain hurt.
Older people by nature may not engage in as deep level of thought in any activity.
Also, the younger people are probably problem solving by attempting to construct the most accurate search terms that returns the best results for what they want.
This is the same as learning to problem solve in any activity - including those outside of the internet.
When you're doing an internet search you have to actually give input. You have give google something to search for.
When you're reading a book or a given article you don't have to think about where to find the information, it will (or won't) be contained in the material directly in front of you. There's nothing to think about as far as looking information up. Just read whats there.
Also I wonder if some of the difference in brain activity due to age is part of the actual typing. If you sit someone down who can type 60 words a minute in front of google, they are going to used a much different and well used part of their brain to type than someone who has to stare at the keyboard and hunt and peck.
Personally I kind of enjoy that I can type fairly quickly, I even like the feel of utilizing the skill. I believe most of the internet savvy generation can type pretty well, but I think a fair amount of our parents generation are still at hunt and peck.
Eschew Obfuscation
Can I borrow your paragraph for a minute?
You mean that trained older auto-tech brains, when confronted with an familiar, engaging mechanical car engine stimulated more of the brain than when they tested young subjects who had essentially no concept of the depth of information that was available in that vehicle.
You mean that trained older doctor brains, when confronted with an familiar, engaging biochemical patient stimulated more of the brain than when they tested young subjects who had essentially no concept of the depth of information that was available in a person's anatomy.
I am shocked with this discovery. Shocked, I tell you. We should spend much more on this research - maybe with animals - to determine the extent of this effect. Do you suppose these guys produce a newsletter?
Sounds like a flawed study to me.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
If the internet is good for your brain why do I feel stupider after reading more than 3 YouTube comments?
I would chalk this up to the fact that you have a limited supply of paper material to read but on the internet you can start reading about something and then find something else that intrigues you even more and jump to that. Sometimes I can spend a good hour or more on wikipedia, the quality of the material is tolerable enough to stay there just jumping from article to article and find yourself so far from your original interest but always within YOUR own interests and not really some authors per say.
So basicaly the brain adapts itself to what it is doing. If you use it, no matter how trivial will 'train' the brain. Who would have thought?
Now what you need to do is if the good that is being done is better then doing it in an alternative way. e.g. instead of searching for something online, getting the knowledge on how to do research with books or in any other way.
Or perhaps even walking to the library and looking thing up there gives you better blood circulation that is more important then what surfing does.
I am sure that then it doesn't look that good anymore.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Argh, I've done it again, I'm posting on Slashdot. Anyone else able to make it past 11am without pointing their browser somewhere unrelated to work?
Anything is better then watching Lame TV shows.......
Seems like they're mixing up too many variables in this pot.
lol u tk him 2da bar|?
Kind of surprising actually.
I believe the convention has it that for a particular task, expert brains have less activity than novice brains.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0003270
http://www.jstor.org/pss/1576979
The summery above says that the internet savvy test subjects were younger than those who have never used it before, however, the article linked clearly mentions that all subjects were aged 55-76, and that "the groups were similar in age, gender and education."
Also, the test only included 24 subjects, which is not very much to base a theory on. A larger study showing similar results would be more reliable.
I can't believe it's n
She made the willows dance
One round of Badgers or banana phone of Dancing Hamsters and all that good to your brain is undone.
The internet meme is something that breaks your brain and soon you become addicted to it and will cling to it like a person in the country clings to religion and guns.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
That's why that Japanese guy created Brain Age.
I'm not positive, but I think it was designed to help elderly people retain their mental acuity.
I'm sorry, I couldn't concentrate on your post.
That is a fascinating article with a superb ending. Ironically, though, I have other things to do this morning so I skipped to the end after about 7 paragraphs :P
Life is rarely fair. Cherish the moments when there is a right answer.
I do not see how this proves anything, the groups were fundamentally different in age as well as experience in internet usage. and therefore any results they got could be due to age.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
"We found that in reading the book task, the visual cortex -- the part of the brain that controls reading and language -- was activated," Small said."
The visual cortex, which is the occipital cortex, at the back of the head, processes vision from the very basic perception through combining perceptual elements into a whole visual picture. It puts together the images of the letters into words and words into phrases (visual "chunks" per George Miller). It does not "read".
Scanning the phrases/chunks requires the superior frontal lobes (Brodmann area 8), which control eye movement. The scanned material is fed to Wernicke's area (Brodmann 22, the posterior section of the superior temporal gyrus, encircling the auditory cortex, on the Sylvian fissure), drawing on the parietal association cortices which in turn are receiving the visual material from the occipital primary and secondary visual systems. making sense of it requires use of Broca's area (Brodmann 44 and 45; the opercular and triangular sections of the inferior frontal gyrus of the frontal lobe), which produces spoken words by controlling the necesssary motor functions, and interestingly controls comprehension in reading. This is why reading causes subvocalization (movement of speech creating anatomy despite reading silently).
TFA saw "activity" in the visual area. If they didn't see it in all the above, they weren't seeing reading. This is what happens when people who don't fully comprehend either the target or the technology point the technology at the target. Small is a geriatric psychologist. He's not a neural anatomy and physiology specialist. Most importantly, just as with the vast majority of people reporting fMRI results, he doesn't grasp what he's measuring.
MRI measures relative levels of oxyhemoglobin and carboxyhemoglobin. fMRI measures it during different tasks (ie. reading vs. not reading). It is fairly well supported that the more difference between them, the more oxygen is being used and so the more the brain is working in that area. This is not necessarily the case, as more oxygenation without subsequent metabolism as well as the inverse, can cause identical results. In any case, the implied metabolism probably represents neurons working. 85% of the brain is excitatory and operates constantly, although changing some with demand. 15% of the brain is inhibitory, and carves out the important stuff from the vast array of what's taken in. fMRI is only measuring implied neural metabolism. It cannot possibly differentiate between excitatory and inhibitory activity, and in fact measures both without being able to tell them apart.
He saw that cells in the visual cortex were using more blood looking at stuff in people who look at stuff more. That's all he can say. Everything else is pure conjecture. And if he didn't see the other areas activating at the same time, he damn sure can't say he was seeing reading happening.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
me did google, me did good. me got here. hurray!
It is very apparent to me, as it likely is to most of you, that the advent of the Internet is certainly one of the greatest technological advances of our lifetimes. However, when you get more information than you can process, and when your interests get so varied that you can't possibly absorb all of it, I would think that your mind, your work, or your lifestyle would actually suffer.
Let me give you an example. My daily read list keeps expanding: 2 local newspapers, CNN.com, wired.com, slashdot.com, fredmiranda.com, pcmag.com, and even 4chan.com/b/ from time to time. That list doesn't account for the things that pop up during the day. How on earth can a person absorb all that, much less make time to read them all?
So what about young people whose interests are more varied? You pile porn and youtube on top of what they should be doing in a day's time (like attending classes or studying) and what then? How can unlimited access to all information be a good thing for everyone?
Of course, my opinions are just that and are not based in fact at all, other than my own experiences.
It says nothing about dividing groups based on age. In face, it says: "(The) team studied 24 normal volunteers between the ages of 55 and 76. Half were experienced at searching the Internet and the other half had no Web experience. Otherwise, the groups were similar in age, gender and education. Both groups were asked to do Internet searches and book reading tasks while their brain activity was monitored." It actually appears to me that the team made an effort to factor out other potential variables. Still, correlation is not causation. The next logical study would be to take another mixed group of non-internet users and do a baseline study. Measure visual cortex activity, train them to use the internet regularly, and then measure VC activity again months later.
... does arguing on the internet still make you retarded?
Yes this was common media knowledge in Canada since the late 60s.
It has to do with hot and cool media. Cool media cause total involvement where as hot media are more focused and have a more fixed point of view. Cool media engage your brain to fill in the gaps. One is not better than the other they are just different. Hot has intensity and repeatability. Cool is more human and promotes total awareness.
http://cultofjim.com/scripture/understanding_media/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan
Wait until the US "discovers" what Canadians figured out in the 70s
His team studied 24 normal volunteers between the ages of 55 and 76. Half were experienced at searching the Internet and the other half had no Web experience. Otherwise, the groups were similar in age, gender and education.
So what's this in the summary:
The test had two groups, young people who used the Internet, and older people who had never been online.
Also since when does studying only 24 people (12 variable and 12 control), constitute 'research'. It looks like they might be onto something worth researching, but haven't IMHO done enough research yet to be releasing findings.
Just like e-mail is only for old people
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/30/0034259&tid=215&tid=95&tid=1
Pancakes. Oh I blew it.
the wrist
I remember when televison was accused of rotting one's mind.
For n = 0..1
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
Correlation != causation. Anybody with half a brain can see that the internet is filled to the gills with idiocy. In fact, i venture to say that its imposable to meet somebody as asinine in real life as somebody on a web forum.
Browse at -1 to keep an eye out for abuses.
No, where n is arbitrarily large.
In terms of size, yes. In terms of making one smarter, no.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
All the extra brain activity is due to all the crpa you run into on a simple google search: annoyance , anger, fear, doubt, wonder, excitement, sexual, etc.
Annoyance that you didn't find what you wanted.
Anger that what you did find was an advertisement.
Fear that you won't find what you need even if you search for an hour.
Doubt that if you find something it could be a lie.
Wonder that what you found might be true!
Excitement, because you might not have to work late if google just gave you the answer to your server error message!
And of course sexual because you can't search for anything without running across the pr0n.
If you actually read the linked article, the study did not compare young people who frequently used the internet against older people who had never used the internet (as such a study would be useless, because the two compared groups would not be similar in "all ways except for the aspect being studied," which would be essential to at least some useful correlation). The Post article states "His team studied 24 normal volunteers between the ages of 55 and 76. Half were experienced at searching the Internet and the other half had no Web experience. Otherwise, the groups were similar in age, gender and education." A few things: 1) 24 individuals means a very small sample size. I hardly expect such a study to have significant statistical power, and it would be immensely difficult to try to extend the applicability of this study to a significantly larger population. 2) We are not told what defines "Web experience." Is there a cutoff related to average hours spent online, or are we to believe that the half with "no Web experience" have never actually used the Internet at all, and that this study was their first time online (in which case, the results would be expected, not a result of "internet users have more active brains")? 3) I don't know if the original poster decided to post this for sensationalism, but this article is linked on Google News (granted, it shouldn't be one's only source of information, but even so); if that was the intent, it's a very irresponsible use of information dispersion/"journalism."
Why is it we require so much more activity to relate our query to google search terms, while noobs just type a word and give up? Let's see how I do it. Index of/ inurl:slashdot.org -html -php -bob -anonymous coward + porn passwords - sheep "Parent directory" -torrent -rapidshare OR *:*@pornsite.com No password? Visa number near this proxy..... WHY is it so complicated? I feel John Mcains pain....
I'm sick of seeing half-baked studies. It's really easy to conduce that the internet is more stimulating than reading. No offense Ars, we love ya but don't subject yourself to sink to the same level as the research study groups (even if it does includes a cool new crawler).
In reading you are consuming the material and visualizing the meanings in your head.
On the internet you're interacting, meaning you're doing the same but you're also navigating where you're going to go, visually picking apart and breaking out the meaning from an unlimited number of visual layouts, scanning the information at a much quicker rate and picking out the information instead of focusing on each word, etc...
Just the process of scanning and picking out useful information at high speeds in a larger array of formats is like redbull for your synapses responsiveness.
I use computers and the internet and I have yet to meet a person who can watch me work on a computer without saying, "Hey, slow down, I can't see what you're doing," or "How can you possibly get any useful information out of what your doing when you go that fast."
That's all because my computer-fu is on high. I type at 45-55 wpm when I'm typing a document, and I can easily filter out all but the most useful of information in a massive set, because I have had to use that skill so much in the past.
Not to mention that, as a web designer/developer it is key to a successful site that the information be written in a manner that is easy to skim over quickly or you will never be able to increase your ratings. So the whole internet is based on the principle that information should be quick and easy to find. Universities wonder why the majority of people attending prefer to steer clear of their massive online research databases of cited materials. Because, the presentation of the information is archaic and frankly sucks.
For all of you saying that your attention span is getting worse, you don't know what attention span is (ie you're not becoming ADHD). Bad attention span is not being able to focus on anything for a long period of time, not, not being able to focus on what you don't want to do for a long period. IE. youu-rack-uh-dissaprine (see southparkstudios.com season 9 episode "Bloody Mary"). Unlike TV (which is utterly superficial and leaves little room for mental stimulation or imagination) the internet is extremely mentally stimulating. That little chemical that's released when we accomplish something that makes us feel good is very easy to come across on the internet because you can accomplish so much with so little effort. Unfortunately, this desensitizes the rush of accomplishment we get in realistic environment (work). This is increased ten-fold in gaming because games actually have clear cut objectives and you're constantly trying to or completing those objectives.
If you want to be better at focusing on work, eliminate the 3rd party distractions and create ways to break tasks into smaller more-manageable parts so you can accomplish more ('number of' not necessarily 'aggregate quantity').
We may be relating different concepts.
I was aiming after the "expert can actively engage in his activity while the novice simply stares in dismay without processing anything". In other words, drawn very roughly from personal experience, the novice sufficiently out of depth is so stonewalled that essentially no useful thought on the subject occurs at all. I actually keep a couple of books in my library for exactly this reason, with the theme of monitoring my meta-emotions.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Same reason I keep porn...
:).
Virgin Slashdotter = novice