That Neuroscience Guy - The Neuroscience of Relying on Technology

Episode Date: July 17, 2022

When was the last time you remembered a friend's phone number or did math without a calculator? It's increasingly common for us to rely on technology for many different day-to-day functions, but how does that affect our brain? Today's episode of That Neuroscience Guy discusses how relying on technology can impact our brain function. 

Hi, my name is Olof Kregolsen, and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. And in my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to the podcast. We live in a world filled with technology, and we use it every day. We use our phones to navigate for us, remember phone numbers for us, do simple math for us, even spell for us. And our reliance on this technology is clearly increasing. But is it having a negative impact on our brain? Is our reliance on technology literally making us less smart? On today's podcast, the impact of our reliance on technology on our brains. Sadly, there's quite a bit of evidence that our increasing reliance on technology is having a negative impact on the brain. We can start with a simple thing that most of us rely on,

even me if I'm being honest, and that's spell checking. With spell checking algorithms in almost every piece of software that we use, is this making us worse at spelling? It appears so. In a study back in 2005, they examined basically how our increasing reliance on spell checking had impacted our ability to spell, quite literally. And the conclusion was simple. Computer spellcheck, something that had been around since the 1970s, has been making us worse at spelling for quite a long time. And this is supported by recent survey research. A survey that looked at 2,000 people found one-third of the people

couldn't spell definitely, and two-thirds couldn't spell separate. Now, to be fair, there are some counter arguments. Spell checking does allow us to write more quickly and it does fix our mistakes. But is that beneficial? Is it beneficial to be able to literally spell words from memory? We'll come back to that one in a second. Let's move on to math. Do calculators make us worse at math? Again, the jury's out. Most of the scientific data that I could find indicates that in general, students are worse at basic mathematical operations, but at the same time, they were able to do more advanced mathematical operations like trigonometry.

same time, they were able to do more advanced mathematical operations like trigonometry. Now, in both instances, why? We talked about learning a couple episodes ago, so let me remind you of the idea of mass practice. In terms of learning principles, education knows that mass practice is good, but at the same time, there's this push to have less of a focus on mass repetition. So learning theory is pretty clear that mass practice, and of course, if you think back, you might want to distribute it a little, but we know it's good. But at the same time, the system is decreasing this use of repetition. I find this really, really interesting because how many Olympic athletes have you heard that have won gold medals without extensive practice?

How many amazing musicians do you know that are naturally talented or as opposed to people that got that way through lots of practice? And this is true for cognitive skills. Cognitive skills are strengthened through mass practice. And this has a strong neural basis. This goes back to the basic principles of learning. If you remember from quite a while ago, we talked about Hebb's Law, a very simple axiom that says neurons that fire together, wire together. From a neuroscience perspective, it is a well-established fact, based on Hebb's Law and its implications, that repetition is essential for strengthening neural connections. If you recall, we call this synaptic plasticity. Basically, the idea is quite simple. If you want a neural connection to change and get stronger, in other words, a memory,

a neural connection to change and get stronger, in other words, a memory like your math operations or spelling, you need to enhance that connection or have it activated over and over again. That creates a state called long-term potentiation. And when the neuron is in the state of long-term potentiation, or more correctly, the neural synapse, it is more likely for there to be synaptic growth or more permanent synaptic changes. Repetition of the basic things like spelling and math strengthens neural connections. And it's pretty hard to argue about this because we've seen this now through these crazy microscopes that can look at the neural level and they literally can see this neural change happening through repetition. Now, there's another angle to why repetition and avoiding technology

makes us better at basic skills like spelling and math. If you force students to do this themselves, it engages the prefrontal cortex. You've probably had that. If you think back to when you were learning trigonometry or learning to spell, it's like the front of your brain hurts. That's the prefrontal cortex doing its work. Now, it doesn't physically cause pain. That's sort of a psychological outcome. But engaging the prefrontal cortex is good for brain health. We know that. Keeping the brain active promotes a healthier and better functioning brain. And if you become fully reliant on spell checking or you become fully reliant on

calculators, this engagement of the prefrontal cortex doesn't happen to the same extent. And there's more instances of this. What about Google Maps and spatial navigation? Well, it also appears that our increasing reliance on GPS is bad for our spatial memory. In another recent study, researchers looked at people who relied on GPS a lot versus people that relied on GPS a lot less. And basically in the group that relied on GPS a lot, when given spatial memory tasks, they found less hippocampal activation, and these people were also worse at spatial navigation. Now, we've talked about the hippocampus before, but just as a quick reminder, the hippocampus is a midbrain structure, there's one on either side, and it plays a crucial role in memory formation. But it also plays a

crucial role in spatial navigation. So if you're relying on GPS all the time, you're not activating the hippocampus to the same extent, and therefore your brain is not going to be functioning as healthy as if you were activating it more. What was interesting about this study is the people that were poor at spatial navigation and had less activation self-reported worse confidence. In other words, they knew that they had these bad habits and that's why they relied on GPS, but at the same time, that reliance was what was also making them mad. And other studies have looked at our general ability to remember things like daily schedules and events, and the results are always the same. This reliance is making us

worse. So the next time you're going to put events into your calendar, you know, I do it too. And or a daily planner or something else that's going to tell you what's coming next, try to use your memory as well, as opposed to letting your tablet or your computer or your phone drive everything. Again, forcing your brain to remember these things engages the hippocampus, it engages the prefrontal cortex, and if it's something that you repeat, remember, it causes synaptic plasticity to occur. And sadly, it gets even a bit worse. According to a 2020 clinical neuroscience study, what was looking at the consequences of digital technology on brain health, they found that frequent use of technology increased the likelihood of ADHD. It encouraged

addictive behaviors. It can interfere with sleep. It can interfere with brain development, and it can even have a negative impact on emotional and social intelligence. So this reliance on technology is causing a lot of problems. And of course, it goes without saying that even Facebook is at fault, although this may not surprise you. This is another study I found that was looking at this, and they found that people that were more reliant on Facebook for news were worse at tests of actual factual knowledge of political issues and other everyday events. So that's not quite the same thing, but that reliance is causing you to remember the wrong

things which I would argue is having a negative impact on brain function so technology is not completely at fault here it's a specific program that's being used but I think you get my point now what can we do about this well it's quite simple Try and be less reliant on technology. You might think as you get older, this is hard to do, but you can do it. Engaging the brain is healthy and lifelong learning is possible. We went over that on the episode on aging. As people age, they can still learn new things. And if we're talking about school systems and stuff, of course, that's a political issue.

But I personally hope that one day we get back to the basics just a little bit more. Do you want to say this as I wrap up? This is an emerging area of research, and I wanted to tackle it because I had three separate listeners message me and say, hey, can you talk about this? So I did a bit of reading and was kind of not surprised about what I found. But there are contradictory results and there are some studies that highlight the fact that technology does allow us to do things that we might not even be able to do without it. So while I believe, given the evidence that I've found, that technology may be having a negative impact on brain health, I have to emphasize this is a story that we have to keep an eye on. So, technology and its impact on the brain. Thank you so much for listening. Remember,

please subscribe. It really helps us. Also, if you have ideas, email us at thatneuroscienceguy at gmail.com, or you can DM me directly on Twitter at that neuroscience guy and check out the website that neuroscience guy dot com. You can support us through Patreon and you can also buy some. Well, I think they're cool T-shirts from our Etsy store. My name's Olive Kregolson and I'm that neuroscience guy. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you on Wednesday for another neuroscience bite.