

Is Google Rewiring Our Brains? Yes. fMRI studies of websearch in the Internet savvy. - DaniFong
http://searchengineland.com/dr-teena-moody-chatting-about-our-brains-on-google-16728

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psyklic
_Anything_ we do daily will "rewire our brains" ... unfortunately, nothing
practical can be done with these results, and scientists still really don't
know how to interpret them. So, I believe that fMRI studies such as this one
really only serve as curios ...

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DaniFong
As a first guess, which the researchers themselves offer, the marker of
internet savvy that they found was the frontal lobe processing, which is
roughly that used in decision making, synthesis, and discrimination, is
invoked. In other words, during internet search, savvy users constantly
assessing the credibility of sources and validity of answers. This gives
directly two principles which Google has used to dominate the market:
authority, as encoded in page rank, and the swift checking of relevance and
credibility, as helped by the short blurbs of relevant text, the back-links to
similar pages or pages that link to it, and the quick viewing enabled by
Google cache and 'view as html.' Anything further improving these processes
would likely be a significant improvement in user experience.

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psyklic
>> In other words, during internet search, savvy users constantly assessing
the credibility of sources and validity of answers.

You're extrapolating too much from what was found! I think you'd be surprised
just how little frontal lobe activation actually reveals.

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DaniFong
It's a strength of the scientific method that one can offer a hypothesis
without believing it. In any case, there are additional cognitive tests which
one can use to examine the actual behavior from a different angle.

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greyman
>> So, as you become more comfortable with the Internet, you actually use more
of the brain. <<

Ok, this sounds like an interesting observation (although I wouldn't call that
counter-intuitive). What else did they discover? Couldn't find much more
there...

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alecst
It's counter-intuitive because it's expected that when people become more
proficient at an activity their brains will consume fewer resources.

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critic
> Is Google Rewiring Our Brains?

Sounds like a lawsuit.

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ajkirwin
Every time I see the words 'fMRI', I want to scream. They're an extremely
blunt tool which people are using like a scalpel.

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DaniFong
How is this study using fMRI as a scalpel? I think the resolution is more than
good enough to isolate activity in decision areas of the brain, which is
exactly what they're doing.

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ajkirwin
Yes, but it can't tell what you're actually thinking or doing. That's my
problem with fMRIs.

