Oxford scientist calls for research on brain change

This seems to be a further chapter opening in the debate about what the internet etc might be doing to our minds, brains and culture. I have blogged about this before (and here) and my big concern continues to be that much of what is reported is of the alarmist, moral panic sort of thing which assumes that any change in this respect is by definition a bad thing. Missing, of course, that all technology changes us in various ways. The thing to recall is that the changes are normally for good and ill, and what is good and ill may vary and the issue is not to stop the change but to understand the effects and work to optimise the effects for human welfare (yes we need to question that 'meme' that demonises technological change and places it in the Frankenstein mold). Examples of tech changing us? Fire enabling cooking of food which was probably responsible at least in part for freeing up metabolic resources to enable social and brain development and my perennial favourite: moveable type and rag-paper enabling cheap books and which Walter Ong (Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (New Accents)) would argue has a profound effect on the way we think (and a bit later in the article we read this: "Maryanne Wolf, a cognitive neuroscientist at Tufts University in Massachusetts and author of Proust and the Squid, said that brain circuits honed by reading books and thinking about their content could be lost as people spend more time on computers.")...
So ...

Lady Greenfield has coined the term "mind change" to describe differences that arise in the brain as a result of spending long periods of time on a computer.

And as we think about this, of course, I agree that research on what the changes might be is therefore a good idea so that we can debate what would be the best way to respond and optimise things. However, I think that it would be really unhelpful just to go into 'woe to us' hand-wringing. So I started to get concerned when I read that Ms Greenfield (incidently, as a republican, I mislike those aristocratic titles) said the following I started to smell the odour of the sweaty fear of a moral panic.

For me, this is almost as important as climate change. Whilst of course it doesn't threaten the existence of the planet like climate change, I think the quality of our existence is threatened and the kind of people we might be in the future

You see, it's that default to seeing it as threat rather than 'threat' and 'opportunity'. Of course some may argue that this is a function of the fact that it was delivered at a Tory party conference, you might say that, I couldn't possibly comment. :p And to be fair she does appear to have mentioned some potential advantages:

She said possible benefits of modern technology included higher IQ and faster processing of information, but using internet search engines to find facts may affect people's ability to learn. Computer games in which characters get multiple lives might even foster recklessness

And so we should support research to find out just what effects are playing out. But we should recall that there are likely to be upsides and downsides and that we may be able to mitigate the latter. Let's recall too that, arguably, the cultural support and background abilities we routinely rely on for scientific advance are the products of the way that reading books has taught and formed us to think. But as Einstein is supposed to have said, solution are rarely produced by the same mentality as created the problem ... it may be no bad thing at that level if we find that our mentalities are being changed; let's face it, there are huge problems facing us and it may be that what happens to our thinking in synergy and symbiosis with the internet and it's postgenitors turns out to offer possibilities for solutions.
So let's be a little cautious of the rhetorical game being played when Greenfield says

Every single parent I have spoken to so far is concerned. I have yet to find a parent who says 'I am really pleased that my kid is spending so much time in front of the computer'

That may be true, but what does it really tell us apart from that a lot of parents have concerns. Does it tell us that they are well founded? No. Remember the scare about MRSA vaccine? Many parents can be mistaken and led into a mistaken alarmist concern. In addition, does it tell us that their concern is the same as Greenfield's? No, again, their concern (as mine would be) is more likely to be that kids spending a lot of time in front of a screen may be storing up physical problems such as ill-health, overweight or eye-strain.

About the only thing I would say may have some initial plausibly validity would be the concern about fostering recklessness, though to be honest, I'm not sure that would pass muster either.

A bit further on in the article comes the sense, in line with what I've been trying to say. Step back from the alarmist hype and do some good research.

Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, a cognitive neuroscientist at University College London ... agreed that more research was needed ... "We know nothing at all about how the developing brain is being influenced by video games or social networking and so on. We can only really know how seriously to take this issue once the research starts to produce data. So far, most of the research on how video games affect the brain has been done with adult participants and, perhaps surprisingly, has mostly shown positive effects of gaming on many cognitive abilities,"

So, in fact, what evidence we do have would rather indicate potential benefits rather than harms. Funny that.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/sep/14/oxford-scientist-brain-change