The Future of the Brain - Review
Watch the Baroness Greenfield's TED Talk here
The girl with all the brains
Here is the latest blog from Baroness Greenfield. Baroness Greenfield has been a Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Oxford. Her research concentrates on understanding brain functions and disorders, such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, as well as the physical basis of consciousness. The teenager who cut open a rabbit's head and became a brilliant neuroscientist. What sort of a teenager cuts open a rabbit's head for fun? Baroness Greenfield sort. I wanted to see the brain," she says. "I'd never seen one before." Young Baroness Greenfield experimented on her brother, too. "I bullied him," she admits. "He just did what I told him. I thought it was funny."
This cold-hearted, knife-wielding teenager has grown into a brilliant neuroscientist with new theories about how computers, games and virtual lives are physically changing our brains – altering the way we think, make connections and function.
"The new technologies are invasive and pervasive as never before," she says.
We need – among other things – "a major overhaul of education" to prevent a generation of children becoming emotionally stunted, inarticulate adult hedonists with tiny attention spans, who can't differentiate between blasting away aliens on-screen and happy-slapping grannies.
What worries her most is a shift of focus from content to process. Think of a book about a princess locked in a tower, she says. You go on reading because you care about what happens to the princess. You're lost in the content of the story. Now think of a computer game about the same thing. "You don't give a stuff about the princess, do you? She's there as a goal." It's not about her. It's about you completing a task. "You focus on the process. The experience offered by a computer is the excitement of an anticipated reward. And frustration if you don't get it. In neurochemical terms, it's very similar to when you take a drug."
This is her specialist area. Rescuing the princess produces a chemical in the brain called dopamine, she says, which makes you feel good. But too much of it may damage the prefrontal cortex, and that can limit your ability to understand anything much beyond the here and now. Other addictions have the same effect. "Up until now, [pleasure seeking] has always been part of our lives but a polar opposite to seeking meaning. I fear we are shifting too much in favour of the literal, the hedonistic, the here and now, and losing meaning, context and content in favour of process."
She links the habit of seeking short-term reward, as learned on-screen, with obesity, gambling addiction and the threefold rise in Ritalin prescriptions over the past 10 years.
This cold-hearted, knife-wielding teenager has grown into a brilliant neuroscientist with new theories about how computers, games and virtual lives are physically changing our brains – altering the way we think, make connections and function.
"The new technologies are invasive and pervasive as never before," she says.
We need – among other things – "a major overhaul of education" to prevent a generation of children becoming emotionally stunted, inarticulate adult hedonists with tiny attention spans, who can't differentiate between blasting away aliens on-screen and happy-slapping grannies.
What worries her most is a shift of focus from content to process. Think of a book about a princess locked in a tower, she says. You go on reading because you care about what happens to the princess. You're lost in the content of the story. Now think of a computer game about the same thing. "You don't give a stuff about the princess, do you? She's there as a goal." It's not about her. It's about you completing a task. "You focus on the process. The experience offered by a computer is the excitement of an anticipated reward. And frustration if you don't get it. In neurochemical terms, it's very similar to when you take a drug."
This is her specialist area. Rescuing the princess produces a chemical in the brain called dopamine, she says, which makes you feel good. But too much of it may damage the prefrontal cortex, and that can limit your ability to understand anything much beyond the here and now. Other addictions have the same effect. "Up until now, [pleasure seeking] has always been part of our lives but a polar opposite to seeking meaning. I fear we are shifting too much in favour of the literal, the hedonistic, the here and now, and losing meaning, context and content in favour of process."
She links the habit of seeking short-term reward, as learned on-screen, with obesity, gambling addiction and the threefold rise in Ritalin prescriptions over the past 10 years.
