Checking Email Every Minute, The Plastic Brain, and Schooling
If readers check email or Google during the day far more than they would ever admit while sober–or others stop what they are doing every few seconds to check Twitter–brain researchers have not helped us answer the question: why?
On the one hand, neuroscientists and journalists have argued that unrestrained access to information and communication have rewired the brain. The brain is plastic altering itself in response to the environment and creating new neural pathways that ancestors lacked. So multi-tasking has become the norm and, better yet, we are more productive and connected to people as never before.
On the other hand, there are those neuroscientists who concur that the brain is plastic but it has hardly been rewired. Instead, complete access to information and people–friends, like-minded enthusiasts, and strangers–