The web is altering the way our brains work, according to a
scientist from the University of California, Los Angeles
(UCLA).
Gary Small, a neuroscientist at UCLA in California, said people
more familiar with technology will go to the top of a new social
order.
Gary Small found internet searching and text messaging has made
brains more adept at filtering information and making snap
decisions.
But Small told Reuters technology can can have drawbacks. It can
create internet addicts whose only friends are virtual. He believes
the web has also sparked a dramatic rise in Attention Deficit
Disorder diagnoses.
The most successful people will have a mix of technology and
social skills, said Small.
Small told Reuters: "We're seeing an evolutionary change. The
people in the next generation who are really going to have the edge
are the ones who master the technological skills and also
face-to-face skills.
"They will know when the best response to an e-mail or instant
message is to talk rather than sit and continue to e-mail."
In a new book,
"
iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern
Mind", Small looks at how technology has altered the way young
minds develop, function and interpret information.
Small says experienced internet users showed double the activity
in the areas of the brain that control decision-making and complex
reasoning when compared to internet beginners.
"The brain is very specialised in its circuitry and if you
repeat mental tasks over and over it will strengthen certain neural
circuits and ignore others," Small told Reuters.