Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Digital Devices Deprive Brain of Needed Downtime

by Matt Richtel from the NY Times. This confirms my suspicions that these heavily marketed electronic gadgets are keeping people more distracted than anything else.
“Almost certainly, downtime lets the brain go over experiences it’s had, solidify them and turn them into permanent long-term memories,” said Loren Frank, assistant professor in the department of physiology at the university, where he specializes in learning and memory. He said he believed that when the brain was constantly stimulated, “you prevent this learning process.”