Brain Drain from Electronics and Technology; Restoring our Mental Wellness

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Mardy Ross's picture
Mardy Ross
Title: LumiGRATE Poster - Top of the Totem Pole
Joined: Feb 16 2009
Posts: 2032
User offline. Last seen 46 weeks 3 days ago.

"What is happening to people?" Are you hearing this or saying this as much as I am, lately? Since Lumigrate's approach is 'integrative medicine' from a 'functional medicine' standpoint, where we look at the body/mind/spirit and underlying causes for wellness, or lack thereof (aka 'illness'), I wanted to share an interesting article I found in The New York Times' series "Your Brain on Computers" (link provided, below) 

As always, I encourage people to 'run along' and follow the link to veiw the source, and this case is no exception, because you'll see the reporter, Matt Richtel and all the others who went on a most fascinating river journey in the spring of 2010 in Utah. There is a 360 degree panorama photograph of their launch site with each person on the trip tagged so you get to see the people he reports on in the article.  It's a FUN read, or at least it was for me, seeings as I've done a little bit of river running just east of the Utah border since living in Grand Junction, Colorado since 2004.

The article in the NY Times is titled "Outdoors and Out of Reach, Studying the Brain and is at the following link, and below are some of the highlights for me, related to the question "What is happening to people?"  I am providing this 'offering' related to the 'mind' aspect, and have written initially about the 'body' aspect as it related to nutrition and foods that are affecting our brains.  It was while pouring over the Evolutionary Psychiatry blog by Emily Deans, MD that I found a reference in one of her articles to this fascinating story about the neuroscientists and others who ventured away from technology for a week to see what happened to them. (So THANK YOU, Dr. Emily Deans for having the MOST interesting and helpful information and mental health that I have found on the Internet in terms of it 'fitting' with Lumigrate's perspective. 
 
Here are the links to go out to at some point, if you wish to investigate the sources I have used in creating this topic, beginning with the article that this topic at Lumigrate is based on and inspired by:
 
 
The NY Times' Technology/Brain series www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/technology/16brain.html
 
Emily Deans, MD's blog: evolutionarypsychiatry.blogspot.com/
Here are a few of the highlights from this four Internet page article, which I want to pull out and present here, word for word (because they were so expertly crafted by Matt Richtel: 

 

The believers in the group say the drumbeat of incoming data has created a false sense of urgency that can affect people’s ability to focus.

Working memory is a precious resource in the brain. The scientists hypothesize that a fraction of brain power is tied up in anticipating e-mail and other new information — and that they might be able to prove it using imaging. “To the extent you have less working memory, you have less space for storing and integrating ideas and therefore less to do the reasoning you need to do,” says Mr. Kramer, floating nearby."
 
“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?”

What he is getting at is something the scientists won’t put a fine point on until the last few minutes of the trip: they have ideas on how to answer this question. 

Mr. Atchley says he can see new ways to understand why teenagers decide to text even in dangerous situations, like driving. Perhaps the addictiveness of digital stimulation leads to poor decision-making. Mr. Yantis says a late-night conversation beneath stars and circling bats gave him new ways to think about his research into how and why people are distracted by irrelevant streams of information.

Even without knowing exactly how the trip affected their brains, the scientists are prepared to recommend a little downtime as a path to uncluttered thinking. As Mr. Kramer puts it: “How many years did we prescribe aspirin without knowing the exact mechanism?”

As they near the airport, Mr. Kramer also mentions a personal discovery: “I have a colleague who says that I’m being very impolite when I pull out a computer during meetings. I say: ‘I can listen.’ ”

“Maybe I’m not listening so well. Maybe I can work at being more engaged.”

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.”

“That’s why they call it vacation. It’s restorative,” Mr. Braver says. He wonders if there’s any science behind the nature idea. “Part of being a good scientist is being skeptical.”

Mr. Braver  ..... wonders: Why don’t brains adapt to the heavy stimulation, turning us into ever-stronger multitaskers? “Right,” says Mr. Kramer, the skeptic. “Why wouldn’t the circuits be exercised, in a sense, and we’d get stronger?”

Scientists have long thought about how new forms of media affect attention — from the printing press to the television. But the modern study of attention emerged in the early 1980s with the spread of machines that allowed researchers to see changes in blood flow and electrical activity in the brain. Newer machines have let them pinpoint the parts of the brain that light up when people switch from one task to another, or when they are paying attention to music or a movie.

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.

Now, Mr. Yantis says, “we can study the brain and the mind together in a rigorous scientific way, rather than a Freudian sit-back-and-think-about-it way.”

Some of the scientists say a vacation like this hardly warrants much scrutiny. But the trip’s organizer, David Strayer, a psychology professor at the University of Utah, says that studying what happens when we step away from our devices and rest our brains — in particular, how attention, memory and learning are affected — is important science.

“Attention is the holy grail,” Mr. Strayer says.

“Everything that you’re conscious of, everything you let in, everything you remember and you forget, depends on it.”

Echoing other researchers, Mr. Strayer says that understanding how attention works could help in the treatment of a host of maladies, like attention deficit disorderschizophrenia, and depression. And he says that on a day-to-day basis, too much digital stimulation can “take people who would be functioning O.K. and put them in a range where they’re not psychologically healthy.”

The quest to understand the impact on the brain of heavy technology use — at a time when such use is exploding — is still in its early stages. To Mr. Strayer, it is no less significant than when scientists investigated the effects of consuming too much meat or alcohol.

But stepping away is easier for some than others. The trip begins with a strong defense of digital connectedness, a debate that revolves around one particularly important e-mail.

The five scientists on the trip can be loosely divided into two groups: the believers and the skeptics.

The believers are Mr. Strayer and Paul Atchley, 40, a professor at the University of Kansas, who studies teenagers’ compulsive use of cellphones. They argue that heavy technology use can inhibit deep thought and cause anxiety, and that getting out into nature can help. They take pains in their own lives to regularly log off.

The skeptics use their digital gadgets without reservation. They are not convinced that anything lasting will come of the trip — personally or scientifically.

This group includes the fast-talking Mr. Braver, 41, a brain imaging expert; Steven Yantis, 54, the tall and contemplative chairman of the psychological and brain sciences department at Johns Hopkins, who studies how people switch between tasks; and Art Kramer, 57, a white-bearded professor at the University of Illinois who has gained attention for his studies of the neurological benefits of exercise.

Also on the trip are a reporter and a photographer, and Richard Boyer, a quiet outdoorsman and accomplished landscape painter, who helps Mr. Strayer lead the journey.  


Again, please visit the NY Times article to see all these guys before they took off down the river. (But may I make a note that this group might have had a different outcome if there were some people with two X chromasomes and not all people with XYs -- I was hoping THAT would be explained somewhere in the article ... isn't it the 21st century? (Though with river trips, I know from experience on relatively simply day trips, it simplifies things if people can be very comfortable around each other, which gets more complicated with a mix of sexes. Still, one of my first experiences floating a river was in the Colorado mountains on the Arkansas River, with two complex quadruplegics, one male, one female, and many other developmentally disabled adults. We also camped above timberline one night -- and it ended up being about 1/3 females and 2/3 males, just because there perhaps were fewer females with disabilities who were 'up to the challenge' or thought of by their preceptors for a most interesting and beneficial week at the Breckenridge Outdoor Education Center.) 

www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/technology/16brain.html

 

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Live and Learn. Learn and Live Better! is my motto. I'm Mardy Ross, and I founded Lumigrate in 2008 after a career as an occupational therapist with a background in health education and environmental research program administration. Today I function as the desk clerk for short questions people have, as well as 'concierge' services offered for those who want a thorough exploration of their health history and direction to resources likely to progress their health according to their goals. Contact Us comes to me, so please do if you have questions or comments. Lumigrate is "Lighting the Path to Health and Well-Being" for increasing numbers of people. Follow us on social networking sites such as: Twitter: http://twitter.com/lumigrate and Facebook. (There is my personal page and several Lumigrate pages. For those interested in "groovy" local education and networking for those uniquely talented LumiGRATE experts located in my own back yard, "LumiGRATE Groove of the Grand Valley" is a Facebook page to join. (Many who have joined are beyond our area but like to see the Groovy information! We not only have FUN, we are learning about other providers we can be referring patients to and 'wearing a groove' to each other's doors -- or websites/home offices!) By covering some of the things we do, including case examples, it reinforces the concepts at Lumigrate.com as well as making YOU feel that you're part of a community. Which you ARE at Lumigrate!

This forum is provided to allow members of Lumigrate to share information and ideas. Any recommendations made by forum members regarding medical treatments, medications, or procedures are not endorsed by Lumigrate or practitioners who serve as Lumigrate's medical experts.

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