Tara McGowan's List: Brain Research

• Rose Luckin, Professor of Learner- Centred Design at the London Knowledge Lab and a visiting professor at the University of Sussex, is working on a study examining the internet's impact on pupils' critical and meta-cognitive skills. “The worrying view coming through is that students are lacking in reflective awareness,” she says. “Technology makes it easy for them to collate information, but not to analyse and understand it. Much of the evidence suggests that what is going on out there is quite superficial.”
• This year, researchers at University College London reported the results of a five-year study into the “Google Generation”. When they examined the behaviour of those logging on to the websites of journals, e-books and other sources of written information, they found widespread evidence of “skimming activity”. Users viewed no more than three pages before “bouncing out”.
• their boredom threshold is falling.

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• The first ever virtual longitudinal   study carried out by the CIBER research team at University College   London claims that, although young people demonstrate an apparent   ease and familiarity with computers, they rely heavily on search   engines, view rather than read and do not possess the critical and   analytical skills to assess the information that they find on the   web.

• Conducted by scientists from the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London, the study found that continual e-mail use and text-messaging lowered the average worker's IQ by as much as ten points. Smoking marijuana regularly, on the other hand, causes only a four-point drop in intelligence

• Researchers are finding that attention is crucial to a host of other, sometimes surprising, life skills: the ability to sort through conflicting evidence, to connect more deeply with other people, and even to develop a conscience.
• many scientists are drawing a much clearer picture of attention, which they have come to see as an organ system like circulation or digestion, with its own anatomy, circuitry, and chemistry.
• "If you have good attentional control, you can do more than just pay attention to someone speaking at a lecture, you can control your cognitive processes, control your emotions, better articulate your actions," says Amir Raz, a cognitive neuroscientist at McGill University who is a leading attention researcher. "You can enjoy and gain an edge in life."

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• Thirteen hundred college students from eight academic institutions were surveyed, in classrooms, about their Internet use for the purpose of identifying how their Internet use has affected their social or academic lives.
• a preliminary investigation into various aspects of Internet use among college students
• In addition to looking for alternative methods of connecting to the MUD, Scott demonstrated other criteria of dependence. Scott noted that his pattern of using the Internet revealed the tendency to stay logged-on for increasing amounts of time. He also indicated that, on several occasions, he had made unsuccessful attempts to reduce his Internet usage. Finally, Scott also indicated that he had withdrawn from participating in his hobbies as well as his academic coursework. Despite a period of initial denial, Scott realized that he would be academically dismissed - yet his MUD use continued.
• the new journal Cyberpsychology and Behavior  explores the complex interactions between the Internet, society and behavior. According to the initial edition, "... the Journal will study the effects of advanced technology used by society at large and also how this technology can be used effectively to reduce the cost of healthcare delivery."

  • Cyberpsychology and Behavior journal
• • How much time do students spend on the Internet?
   
  • Among various academic majors, are there differences in the amount of time spent on the  Internet?
   
  • Does excessive Internet use result in academic, social or lifestyle difficulties?
   
  • Are students in certain academic majors more prone to be dependent on the Internet?

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• Long before the invention of the first microprocessor, the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget identified four stages of cognitive development by watching his own children. His theories bring some logic to the debate about how to support your child’s growth with the latest technology.

• Writing in Britain’s Daily Mail, neuroscientist Susan Greenfield, Oxford University Alzheimer’s researcher and author of the book “ID: The Quest For Identity In The 21st Century”, says modern technology, including violent video games, multichannel television and the Internet, is altering the way our brains work.
• “Electronic devices and pharmaceutical drugs all have an impact on the micro- cellular structure and complex biochemistry of our brains. And that, in turn, affects our personality, our behavior and our characteristics. In short, the modern world could well be altering our human identity.” Greenfield said.
• “We could be raising a hedonistic generation who live only in the thrill of the computer-generated moment, and are in distinct danger of detaching themselves from what the rest of us would consider the real world,” she said.
• While not convinced technology will ever truly manipulate the brain in ways that make us more clever or happy, Greenfield nevertheless says there could come a day when outside stimuli is used to harness the brain’s creativity to boost our individuality, instead of diminishing it.

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• study has found that adolescents who play violent video games may exhibit emotional arousal and diminished control, focus and concentration.
• “Our study suggests that playing a certain type of violent video game may have different short-term effects on brain function than playing a nonviolent — but exciting — game,” said Vincent P. Mathews, M.D., professor of radiology at Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis.
• Compared with the group that played the nonviolent game, the group that played the violent video game demonstrated less activation in the prefrontal portions of the brain, which are involved in inhibition, concentration and self-control, and more activation in the amygdala, which is involved in emotional arousal.

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• Multitasking is going to slow you down, increasing the chances of mistakes,” said David E. Meyer, a cognitive scientist and director of the Brain, Cognition and Action Laboratory at the University of Michigan. “Disruptions and interruptions are a bad deal from the standpoint of our ability to process information.”
• René Marois, a neuroscientist and director of the Human Information Processing Laboratory at Vanderbilt University.
• Recently completed research at the Institute for the Future of the Mind at Oxford University suggests the popular perception is open to question. A group of 18- to 21-year-olds and a group of 35- to 39-year-olds were given 90 seconds to translate images into numbers, using a simple code.
• In a recent study, a group of Microsoft workers took, on average, 15 minutes to return to serious mental tasks, like writing reports or computer code, after responding to incoming e-mail or instant messages. They strayed off to reply to other messages or browse news, sports or entertainment Web sites.
• Erik Brynjolfsson of the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a co-author of the paper, along with Sinan Aral of the Stern School of Business at New York University, and Marshall Van Alstyne of Boston University.

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