Use of Technology Erodes Brain Capacity
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In a NY Times Technology article, 5 neuroscientists on a river trip in Utah discuss the erosion of memory and focus by over use of technology.
The group has proponents and skeptics. One group says the use of technology and multitasking should build the brain muscle and make it stronger like exercise. The other group says those two erode the brain’s memory capacity like on a computer and exhaust the brain’s ability to focus, analyze and be creative.
Vacations refresh the brain if you allow yourself to remove the stimulus like cell phones and computers. These days people jump to their cell phones when they are bored, so the brain has little down time to relax.
City life creates more over stimulus. If you think driving on the freeway makes you exhausted, you have part of the picture. Now if you add multi tasking, all your technology and digital connections, responsibilities and anxieties its no wonder people have difficulty relaxing.
This has become such a sizzling field of research that two years ago the National Institutes of Health established a division to support studies of the parts of the brain involved with focus.
“If we can find out that people are walking around fatigued and not realizing their cognitive potential,” Mr. Braver says, then pauses and adds: “What can we do to get us back to our full potential?”
Mr. Braver says that when he retrieved his phone the night before, it dawned on him how much he turns to it in tiny moments of boredom: “Sometimes I do use it as an excuse to be antisocial.”
Mr. Strayer, the trip leader, argues that nature can refresh the brain. “Our senses change. They kind of recalibrate — you notice sounds, like these crickets chirping; you hear the river, the sounds, the smells, you become more connected to the physical environment, the earth, rather than the artificial environment.”
It seems pretty clear, even if not proven, that it pays to turn it all off and retreat to the hills to give the brain and nervous system some down time. It also helps sleep and will generate more creative thinking.
