
Heavy Screen Time Rewires Young Mouse Brains, for Better and Worse - happy-go-lucky
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/11/19/502610055/heavy-screen-time-rewires-young-brains-for-better-and-worse
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60654
TLDR: mice exposed to very high levels of stimulation early in life, grew up
to treat that level of stimulation as baseline later in life. Study posits
that brains wired like that would deal well with high stimulation environments
that would overwhelm regular subjects - but be under stimulated and restless
in "regular" situations.

Very interesting finding for sure - especially since the mice weren't even
playing games etc. They were just exposed to high levels of audiovisual
stimuli. Makes you wonder if actually interacting and problem solving, instead
of just being bombarded with stimuli, would have a different effect...

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sliverstorm
Anecdotally reflected in my youth- had little exposure to television as a kid.
I simply could not ignore "background televisions" for many years, while other
kids whom I knew grew up with constant "background television" could ignore it
without difficulty.

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nugget
Given the environments that a child born today will likely face in the future,
what do you think is the right balance to strike in early childhood?

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sliverstorm
I think being vulnerable to overbearing stimulus is probably less evil than
requiring ongoing level of stimulus to function. Your kids might struggle with
pulling them away from stimulus they are not used to, but they will figure it
out as they grow up and hopefully keep the ability to go without constant
stimulus.

Personally, my plan is to minimize background stimulus so as not to stunt the
ability to focus, and to ensure there are balanced periods of both stimulus
and no stimulus.

You might say that stimulus will be harder and harder to escape in the future,
but I like to think if you choose, you will still be able to keep much of your
life free of it.

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tent
The brain adapts to better deal with what it is exposed to.

Of course an animal raised in an intense environment will handle it better
than one that isn't, and have some difficulty with calmer environments. The
reverse is also true.

It doesn't surprise me that children used to the quick pacing and interesting
stories found in television and games have trouble focusing in slower
environments, such as school.

It's easy to jump to the conclusion that children should be raised without
television or games, but I think we should also experiment more engaging means
of education.

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Moshe_Silnorin
Perhaps the differences in human and mouse metabolism are small enough that
they make good models for testing drugs. I can't think of anything mouse
studies would be less likely to be accurate models for than the effects of the
consumption of media. Video games require modeling a world, suppressing
irrelevant and distracting details, and pursuing goals. This seems very
different from shining a bunch of lights on a mouse.

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simonster
On top of that, mice are nocturnal creatures, so they do not ordinarily
experience the same constant barrage of visual stimuli that humans do.

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wojcech
I very much feel by this study...

I grew up with television, books, audio stories=>constant stimulation. I
brought books to class to read when it got boring...some teachers let me get
away with it(guess who were my favourites).I still crave it and am only slowly
learning to relax nowadays. It actually makes interaction with non
"hyperstimulated" people hard, because I either steamroll them, interrogate
them (because I am interested and give them my full, hungry attention) or zone
out because nothing is happening. "Vibing" and hanging out is not easy for me.

I always blamed it on being minimally autistic(not diagnosed and don't want to
be insensitive, but some non neuronormative things are there i think)

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autogol
I had quite a similar experience, and i think many HN users resonate with this
comment as well. I found physical exercise to be the most effective tool to
alleviate this problem.

About a year ago, i started swimming 3-4 times a week, and it definitely
helped me maintain a less hyperstimulated baseline. Although i have no
resources to back it up, i think it is somehow related to increased production
of dopamine and the psychological effects of exercise (patience, self control,
discipline).

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shloosh
The human brain has proved highly adaptable despite the increasing rate of
technological evolution over the last several centuries. The important
question in my mind is what are we adapting our brains _for_? If you spend 70%
of your waking life watching TV, the skill sets you develop are unlikely to
serve you well in any productive domain.

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B1FF_PSUVM
> unlikely to serve you well in any productive domain

Except, perhaps, those guys tasked with watching two dozen security cameras
...

(Somehow, somewhere, somewhen, there may be a job title such as 'video pattern
recognition specialist')

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userbinator
I suppose this might be able to explain why I've seen a lot of younger
computer users seem to have no problems at all reading webpages full of
flashing, moving ads or just animated GIFs in general, that I would have to
physically block out in order to even focus on the text. However I've also
noticed that a lot of these users are not as attentive to the details of the
text they're reading, skipping entire words and even sentences. Maybe they are
being distracted, but don't notice that they are.

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zebraflask
As soon as I saw the title of this post I thought, "somebody is going to take
a jab at Millennials in less than an hour."

Was not disappointed.

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reader5000
I think the interaction human brain + modern tech stimulation is a giant trend
in human society and evolution. Tech stimulation SIMULATES interaction with
another person, but without all the actual effort and risk exposure to
interacting with another person. Humans prefer the simulation, and since the
entirety of human society is presaged on humans interacting with one another,
the complete proliferation of constant electronic stimulation in human
societies does not bode well for the continued functioning of society.

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mmosta
In the case of humans I don't see how it is any different than say: spending
enough time in the countryside then feeling overwhelmed in a large city.

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posterboy
I'd stipulate, frequent exposure to strong photostimuli burns the eyes. You
should look at the eyes and how those are changed. You here me, people in an
old thread?

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BurningFrog
Getting tired of the "rewired brain" metaphor.

~~~
lgas
That's just because your brain has seen it so many time it's been rewired to
be bored of it.

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thro32
> _" Many of those changes suggest that you have a brain that is wired up at a
> much more baseline excited level," Ramirez reported. "You need much more
> sensory stimulation to get [the brain's] attention."_

I wonder what is control group on this study. Some rat closed in small sterile
cage with zero stimulation. Of course rat from such environment needs less
stimulation to get excited.

It would be valid to compare with rats from their natural environment with all
the exciting smells, predators, food collecting...

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kahrkunne
Nice try but humans aren't mice

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killnine
Ditto, plus, what doesn't 'rewire your brain for better and worse'?

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joggery
>excessive screen time early in life can change the circuits in a growing
brain

Any activity changes the brain. Also, as BurningFrog points out, "rewires" is
a metaphorical term and therefore vague. Ditto "circuits".

>mice

...aren't human.

> But it also meant they acted like they had an attention deficit disorder

Such disorders are pretty loosely defined. Something "like" such a disorder is
vaguer still. And, again, these are _mice_ for goodness sake.

>In a video game, he said, you can meet the equivalent of a lion every few
seconds.

No you can't. Lions are dangerous!

>our understanding of how sensory stimulation affects developing brains.

We're not passive. We _decide_ what to pay attention to. Thus we can't be
stimulated arbitrarily by the environment. Actually I think this is assumed by
the contradictory concept of "attention deficit", elsewhere in the piece.

