London – Can’t recall a friend’s phone number? Press the speed dial on your mobile. Don’t know the way to their house? Use a satnav. Modern technology has taken the strain off our brains with the answers to so many problems available at the click of a button.
But is there a dark side to all this convenience?
Growing scientific evidence suggests a future where our brains may prematurely fail in later life through under-use, thanks to Mother Nature’s rule that we ‘use it or lose it’.
You might describe this new threat to our mental health as ‘e-mentia’ – memory-related problems, and even depression, linked to our overuse of new technology.
Some of the most worrying evidence of the problems we may be storing up for later relate to navigation aids.
Research published in April 2011 shows our growing use of satnavs stops us using the brain’s sophisticated capacity for mapping surroundings as we pass them and building those impressions into a mental picture.
Dr Rosamund Langston, a lecturer in neuroscience at the University of Dundee who conducted the study, said that by using satnavs, we wither away our ‘caveman’ ability to familiarise ourselves with new surroundings by memorising snapshots of them.
The disturbing thing is what happens – or more pertinently what doesn’t happen – in our brain when we rely on an electronic arrow to lead us through the world.
Last June, Dr Hugo Spiers, a senior lecturer in experimental psychology at University College London, scanned volunteers’ brains as they navigated the maze of streets in Soho, Central London.
Dr Spiers’s scans revealed how we use two distinct areas of our brain to achieve this highly complex feat of mental calculation.
At the beginning of a journey, a region of the brain called the entorhinal cortex mentally constructs an as-the-crow-flies line to the destination. Once we are under way, however, a different area of the brain computes the precise distance along the path to get there. This region is the posterior hippocampus, which is also known for its role in forming memory.
Disturbingly, the study, published in the journal Current Biology, found that neither of these brain regions was active when the volunteers used satnavs. In fact, the volunteers’ brains were much less active in general.
Previous studies have shown how London taxi drivers who have done ‘the knowledge’ show an increase in the size of their hippocampus as a consequence of rote-learning the city’s streetscape. Dr Spiers, a member of the Memory Disorders Research Society, says his results may explain why London taxi drivers’ brains grow: ‘They indicate that it is the daily demand on processing paths in their posterior hippocampus that leads to the impressive expansion in their grey matter.’
Dr Spiers told Good Health how this part of the brain, so vital to memory, may also shrink with disuse – such as relying on satnavs. ‘My research with taxi drivers found indications which suggest there is some shrinkage of their hippocampus after they retire,’ he explained.
The hippocampus and entorhinal cortex are among the first regions to be damaged in age-related cognitive impairment and dementia associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
The concern must be that losing our ancient way-finding skills may make us more prone to such conditions.
That was the controversial suggestion from research published in 2010 by McGill University in Canada.
Researchers had scanned the brains of older adults who used GPS and compared the results with those who read maps. The map-readers showed higher activity and a greater volume of grey matter in the hippocampus than those relying on GPS. The map-readers also did better on a test used in the diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment, which often precedes Alzheimer’s.
The lead investigator, neuroscientist Veronique Bohbot, told the Society for Neuroscience that the results suggest that using spatial memory regularly may improve the function of the hippocampus and help to ward off cognitive impairment as we age.
She feared that relying on computer navigation aids may lead to earlier onset of Alzheimer’s or dementia. ‘Society is geared in many ways toward shrinking the hippocampus,’ she argued. ‘In the next 20 years, I think we’re going to see dementia occurring earlier and earlier.’
But this isn’t just about satnavs. Over-reliance on computer aids of all kinds may rob our brains of the stimulation they need to stay healthy. Research suggests that people who don’t regularly challenge themselves intellectually through work or learning are more likely to suffer from dementia in later life.
This has been demonstrated by scientists at Sydney University’s Brain & Mind Research Institute. Their study of more than 1,000 people aged over 70 found those who had challenging roles in their working lives, such as being managers and supervisors, showed far less shrinkage in their hippocampus regions.
In fact, over a three-year period, those who had been senior managers in mid-life had their hippocampuses shrink at a rate that was five times slower than those who had worked in less demanding roles.
If the use of new technology threatens memory, and exposes us to a danger of dementia earlier in life, it may also be linked to a greater risk of depression.
Until recently, it was thought that our brains grew and developed until we reached adulthood, then stayed unchanged for the rest of our lives.
Research shows quite the opposite – that everything we do in life actually causes our brains to reconfigure themselves in myriad ways.
And there is little doubt that our habitual use of technology is causing unexpected changes. In December, a study found that smartphones seem to have altered the shape and function of the human brain. Dr Arko Ghosh, a neuroscientist at Zurich University, has discovered that people who use touchscreen phones on a daily basis have a larger somatosensory cortex – the area of the brain which controls the thumbs.
The more time someone spends fiddling with their smartphone, the bigger the link between brain and hand, he suggests in the journal Current Biology. That seemingly harmless type of technology-induced brain-modification is relatively easy to identify.
Other studies raise more worrying questions. In September, researchers at Sussex University reported that people who habitually watch more than one screen at a time, for example using a smartphone while sitting in front of television, show an increased risk of depression and emotional problems.
Kep Kee Loh, a neuroscientist at the university’s Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, scanned the brains of 75 volunteers and found that an area of the brain known as the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) was smaller in people who used the most electronic devices simultaneously.
The ACC is a brain region believed to regulate emotions and is involved in decision-making and reasoning.
Although Mr Loh acknowledges that people with smaller ACCs may be predisposed to use more media devices, he argues that it is ‘equally plausible’ that too much technology is damaging the brain. ‘Media multi-tasking is becoming more prevalent in our lives today and there is increasing concern about its impacts on our cognition and social-emotional wellbeing,’ he said.
One crucial clue may lie in a study indicating that using electronic media can chronically raise our subconscious stress levels – and the levels of stress hormones in our bloodstream.
In 2013, Tom Jackson, a professor of information and knowledge management at Loughborough University, studied the physiological and psychological impact of email use on employees at a government agency.
He tracked the blood pressure, heart rate and cortisol levels of 30 members of staff, as well as paper-based diaries kept by the employees. Cortisol is a steroid hormone released by the adrenal gland when people are stressed.
Professor Jackson’s findings showed that employees are more prone to increased stress when reading and sending emails. However, he believes email is not the enemy. While email was the particular electronic media he studied, he believes that it is ‘no worse than any of the others’.
The basic cause of the chronic stress, he argues, is that we are constantly multi-tasking with the use of gadgets and screens.
‘Multi-tasking email alongside other communication media, such as phone and face-to-face meetings, increases the risk of becoming stressed,’ he concluded.
If the chronic-stress argument holds water, then the Sussex University study linking multiple screens and brain damage may be explained by chronically elevated levels of cortisol.
Furthermore, numerous studies have established that people with high cortisol levels have a significantly higher risk of developing dementia in later life, as well as depression.
All of these studies, put together, suggest that we may be facing a perfect storm of factors which mean our electronic thinking aids may in fact be undermining our brain function .
The Germans have a word for this type of backfiring phenomenon: Verschlimmbesserung. Roughly translated, it means ‘an improvement that makes things worse’.
How do we help our brain circuits to survive in the electronic age? Joydeep Bhattacharya, professor of psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London, recommends striking a balance: mixing technology use with mental effort.
‘There are two sides to using technology,’ he explains. ‘Some studies have indicated that playing video games can improve attention skills in older people.
‘On the other hand, over-use may be causing some negative consequences with older people’s mental functions.’
He says more research is needed, pointing out that ‘very little has been done on the impact of technology on senior adults’ brains, despite the fact that people use it more than ever, and the technology is evolving very fast’.
Dr Doug Brown, director of research and development at the Alzheimer’s Society, adds: ‘We know that keeping the brain active through activities such as crosswords or reading may help to guard against cognitive decline, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that things which make life easier would do the opposite.
‘While there is emerging evidence that having so much information at our fingertips could change the way we use our brain, for better and worse, technologies such as satnav simply haven’t been widely used for long enough to evaluate how it could change our cognitive health in the long run.’
But for now it seems only wise not to rely on technology to do all our thinking for us, says Professor Battacharya. ‘If you get a machine to do all your mathematical and map-reading processes, then clearly your brain is not doing the work.’
Dr Veronique Bohbot recommends using GPS only to help us find new destinations, then disabling the gadget on return journeys or when going somewhere that is not new.
Another answer may be simply to switch off more.
It might make us have to stretch our grey matter. But in the long term, our brains may thank us for it.
Daily Mail