Is there some kind of structural evolution occurring in the human brain as as result of the proliferation of information technology and its instantiates (cell phones, video games, text chat, video chat, email)?
It has been established that environment, culture and behavior result in modifications to brain structure. Mark Prensky has observed that brain plasticity requires intense concentration for several hours a day, five days a week in order to bring about neural changes — thus musicians constantly practice and the modifications supporting scientific thought requires immersion in an analytical environment or laboratory. Presnky’s hypothesis is that a child’s current environment of videogames, instant messaging, MTV and email is programming his brain for high speed multitasking.
I think back on the “chat” systems of the early 1990’s, primarily inter-relay chat or IRC. It was typical behavior for the cogensi to run multiple conversations. Characteristic of these ‘chats’ were extended periods between responses corresponding to slow networks; ‘net-splits’ where server-to-server links disconnected from each other and conversants disappeared; and the simple fact that the other party was engaged in multiple conversations of their own and was busy typing. As a consequence of these ‘communication channel effects’ one tended to become multi-threaded — that is to say, develop the ability to maintain multiple running conversations simultaneously. This is significantly different from, yet similar to, multi-tasking. Tasks tend to be discrete packages of work that are dispatched as capacity becomes available. A conversation thread has inherently stateful properties such as the mental image being built of the other party through successive messages, the intended strategy for conveying an idea or concept, as well as the past conversation history. People who engaged in IRC activity developed the ability to manage across multiple threads.
Current numbers suggest that a digital native, that is to say a child developing in a digital environment with access to email, cell phones, text chat and videogames has developed this ability as part of a standard development process. It is estimated [Prensky] that a child from birth to age 18 is exposed to 10,000 hours of video games, 20,000 hours of television, and 200,000 hours of email or instant messaging activity. It is not unheard of to observe a child studying from a traditional book while watching television, making a cell phone call or text call, and chatting on a MySpace/Facebook. The ability to effectively do this suggests that a brain structure that supports a multi-threaded environment must exist.
Traditional educators would have the student studying in a quiet environment, absolved from interacting with the usual digital digressions. Indeed, traditional teaching is single threaded, conveying a single concept through the classroom presentation. If the brain structure is evolving through exposure to digital technology, then traditional educational precepts may be incorrect and new methods of teaching will need to be developed.
Visualize a teacher presenting three different sets of problems, related in concept, but of different levels of difficulty, simultaneously and interactively. This would be inherently confusing to a single-threaded student but may provide a method to actually teach content in the NCLB single classroom.
If, in fact, the brain structure is evolving to support multi-threaded operations, there may be other manifestations. One indicator may be an increased prevalence of Attention Deficit [Hyperkinetic]Disorder (AD[H]D) [also HKD]. One analysis of the disorder postulates that the ventral tegmental area (VTA) is insufficiently activated to sustain concentration. This and other disorder models assume that the brain is wired as a single threaded entity. A brain with multiple idle threads waiting in the pool, may begin using some of those idle threads to process some totally unrelated and irrelevant activity with the result of an apparent attention lapse. ADD treatment protocols may work by affecting the reticular activating system (RAS), as stated, but by reducing that number of simultaneous threads available.
What is significant here is that the evolutionary development of a multi-threaded brain structure requires a certain amount of time, which is dependent on the saturation of the digital technology into the culture. The pressure to adapt to a multi-threaded activity environment will be large due to peer pressure and social context. The ability to manage multi-threaded activities will likely lag as management processes, which typically have to be trained by reflection, tend to lag the activities they are managing. As a result, while there is pressure to develop and use these techniques, with the consequent cortical rewiring, there is little understanding of, or methods available for their management. The result of a modified brain structure without the overlying thread management system could easily lead to ADD.
Virtually all of the activities a teenage child is exposed to has characteristics which support a multi-threaded operational state. Cell phone texting, instant messaging, and social networking chats all are subject to the same channel effects mentioned in conjunction with IRC. The delays are shorter due to higher available bandwidth and better technology, but the inherent multi-threaded nature is still there. Email, once viewed as the “instant” replacement for written memos has been relegated to the same status in the new digital age as “snail mail” was in the earlier transition. Video games, multi-player games (WOW) and the like all require a multi-threaded attention span.
This is a wake-up call for educators and health management officials. Efforts need to be made to develop appropriate management techniques for the multi-threaded brain to allow a person to more effectively manage his thought processes in the non-digital environment as well as the digital environment. Educators need to understand how to train train these techniques for the new brain and not rely on drugs to constrain the new structure into a parody of the old single-threaded brain. And sociologists need to be aware that the world has changed yet again, and that the pace is even faster than ever before.
May 2, 2008 at 8:40 am
Very interesting, but I think that it’s a little misleading to talk about evolution in this context. What we’re really talking about is *training* our brains and the brains of our children.
To put it simply, we will not see an effects of evolution (i.e. a fundamental change in the way that the brain operates that is passed down to our children) in this area unless a special ability to operate well in this environment translates into an increased number of children.
I think that what we will see is, in fact, the opposite.
I am going to assume that a facility of operating in our new society will translate generally into a higher level of education and a more successful career and more wealth. North American demographics tell us that these are the people who have *fewer* children.
In North America, I think we will see that generally the skills that make individuals successful in our (Western) society will be shared by a smaller and smaller percentage of the population as time goes on.
Sure sounds depressing to me, and while I strayed a little from the topic of the post, this has been on my mind for a while.
May 2, 2008 at 10:15 am
Nonsense. Certainly those with higher education and more wealth tend to have fewer children. That’s been true everywhere for ages.
And if there were no social mobility that would indeed produce an ever-shrinking elite class. But social mobility in the U.S. is very large, both as individuals age and across generations.
This is especially true of immigrants, who are one of our largest demographic sources of large families. Within just a few generations, most immigrant families move from scraping by to solidly middle class—often with a few members in the upper class.
But, for those concerned about children left behind by this process, and there will be some, especially in the underclasses where cultural norms prevent success, may I suggest supporting things like OLPC, library computing resources, and Wal*Mart (source of cheap consumer goods for the masses). That will ensure that even the children of the poor get the maximum exposure to the technologies that seem to train the brain for success.
Of course, if you really want to help, confronting those cultural norms that ensure failure would be an even better step, but that’s a rant for another day!
May 2, 2008 at 10:28 am
To expand on the social mobility point, here’s some facts (from a report from an organization arguing that there’s too little social mobility in the U.S.):
Parent’s Quintile Your Quintile is:
Higher The Same Lower
Under $32K 58% 42% 0%
Under $52K 51% 26% 23%
Under $70K 36% 24% 44.5%
Under $98K 24% 25% 51%
Over $98K 0%(14.2%*) 42% 58%
Top 5% 0% 22% 78%(49%**)
* chance go go from top 20% to top 5%
** chance to go from top 5% to bottom four quintiles (below $98K)
May 2, 2008 at 10:30 am
Chris — point taken.
I was referring to evolution in a loose sense in that the brain structure is different than that in a non-digital society.
Although, along that line, one should consider how survival can be enhanced by the ability to deal with technology. Certainly, social ‘survival’ is dependent on computer literacy — at least in the developed world. Computer skills will unlikely achieve the learn-or-die level needed to promote true evolution — if only because of the social programs that ensure survival whatever the literacy level of such skills.
May 2, 2008 at 10:35 am
I would agree that class mobility is good (naively upwards, but downward mobility has its benefits, too), but I would leave out “library computing resources” as part of the panacea. Free/cheap municipally-sponsored computing resources seems important, but I’m not sure libraries are the right place for them.
-AI
May 2, 2008 at 4:48 pm
I accept that there are very few things that are learn-or-die in today’s world, but I would say that the more common genes will be the ones that are copied the most number of times (most children). This would make it the dominant trait of the population.
Granted everything is much more complicated in real life with mixing populations and imigration and the fact that the west is not the future of the world at least population wise.
—
I like that our brains are changing to adapt to our high-tech environment. It makes me optimistic to think that we can each change and adapt to different ways of life. It reminds me of the keynote address by Clay Shirky at the web 2.0 conference that I heard through BoingBoing about the death of the sitcom and how when there are major changes in society it takes a couple generations for us to figure out what to do with ourselves.
here is the link to the bb post and transcript:
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/27/death-of-the-sitcom.html
(my html is rusty so no fancy link for you)
and here is a link to a video (8 minutes) of the keynote.
This is exactly what you are talking about. *Society* is evolving and sometimes this causes actual changes in the way our brains develop.
January 3, 2009 at 1:45 pm
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