Digital Technology: Impact on Memory and Learning

• As a result of constant digital connectivity and increased exposure to electronic devices, the brain and its neural connections are structurally affected by the digital environment, as well as human dynamics of learning and memory.
• The study focuses on the impact of digital technology on human memory and learning processes.

Introduction

• An exponential increase in digital technologies has impacted daily activities.
• Interaction with digital media and constant internet connection has progressively changed habits, relationships, communications, and language.
• The human brain has the capacity and plasticity to adapt to new experiences and stimuli from the internet and interactive digital technologies.

Digital Experiences and Alterations

• Digital experiences assimilated by the brain can be considered positive in terms of potentializing its capacities.
• Some speak of negative effects, referring to technology possibly limiting human creativity.
• Understanding potential cerebral alterations, whether positive or negative, is fundamental to understanding the interaction between the human brain and digital technologies.
• It is undeniable that the brain is being affected quickly, constantly, and permanently.
• Daily exposure to high technology stimulates alterations in neuronal changes and neurotransmitter activation, gradually establishing new neural pathways in the brain.

Digital Stimulation

• The television, an analog medium, affected the dreams of people over 55 years old before the digital era.
• A study reported correlation between exposure to black and white television and propensity to dream in black and white.
• Those who grew up in the Technicolor era frequently experience dreams in color.
• In the digital environment, numerous digital screens and the internet are replacing television as a source of brain stimulation.
• In the 21st century, humans are more exposed to luminous impulses from various electronic devices' screens.
• Luminous impulses expose the eyes, generating chemical and electrical reactions in the retina, sent as images to the brain via the optic nerve.
• Consistent stimuli create neural network itineraries in the brain, initially temporary but likely permanent.
• Neural connections, or synapses, allow us to learn or memorize through everyday stimuli.

Brain Plasticity

• Brains have the capacity to create nervous connections in response to sensory stimuli, experiences, dysfunctions, or damage, known as neuronal or neuroplasticity, and persists throughout life.
• Neuroplasticity is densest and has maximum potential at two years of age and diminishes around 16 years old, remaining constant into old age.
• The brain is an active system in constant change which involves synaptic communication with other neurons.
• Neuroplasticity considers how a wide variety of environmental factors can influence the development of a predefined structure.
• By birth, the human brain brings congenital knowledge from phylogenic factors that do not need to be learned.
• The nervous system learns through repetition and practice, and the functional properties of the body can be incorporated through simple trials.

Evolution

• Cerebral development has augmented the human species' survival capacity by complementing cultural environment characteristics.
• Culture is essential for the nervous system.
• Organisms do not develop normally unless exposed to certain experiences.
• Human brain development cannot be successful only with a biological plan, and the environmental and cultural context is an essential condition for total development.
• A quality and complexity of stimulus is essential for the total development of human brain capacities.
• Though unlikely, the evolution of the human brain growing in thousands of years would demand large amounts of energetic and physical resources.
• Actions activate the brain, including simple ones like opening and closing a hand, and maintains vital functions at high activity even during sleep.
• Constant connectivity and permanent exposure to digital technology at early ages make cerebral plasticity a choice, prudence, and responsibility issue.

Technological Brain

• Psychiatrist Guillermo Carvajal recognizes the “Net Generation” as “brilliant, but terribly vulnerable and influenceable”.
• It is important to organize information for children and young people to make it useful, productive, and value-added for human formation.
• Young brains are sensitive to external influences, with digital technology changing reflexes and mental habits.
• Passed from a generational to a cerebral gap to designate digital natives.
• The brain is a computer that can be artificially replicated in theory.
• Digital technology communicates but does not think, and the brain does not function effectively with excessive information.

Reconstructing the Brain

• Attempting to reconstruct a human brain, Rodolfo Llinás believes it is impossible, although others may think it.
• To him, the brain’s nature involves the capacity to feel and internalize information at a molecular level, not just processing data like a computer but requiring a living substrate.
• From his point of view, cerebral states can be simulated, but a brain is not possible even now.
• Rodolfo Llinás dismisses the possibility of human brain reproduction and total replacement by a non-biological complex.

Functions

• Internet use activates the brain's frontal part, which controls decision-making and complex information integration.
• The cerebral cortex of mammals has greatly expanded and is responsible for detailed images, expanded memory, imagination, reasoning, and language.
• The neocortex is the most modern part of the cerebral cortex.
• The neocortex gets involved in higher functions and Ray Kurzweil relates the digital technology to the neocortex.

Thoughts and Technology

• Computers are starting to dominate human language.
• Search engines will understand millions of online pages and books, combining them with our biological thinking.
• Humans have always had a symbiotic relationship with technology.
• Possibilities include the "Hybrid Thinking" (Biological and non-biological) tendency, expanding memory with Nanotechnology.
• R. Kurzweil believes it will provide us with more neuronal resources to perform different functions allowing for greater creativity.

Effects

• Supporting memory with external formats is not recent, such as writing books.
• Rodolfo Llinás considers "Transhumanism" will not improve the social quality of people.
• Digital technology exposes the brain to stress, also called "technocerebral" exhaustion, potentially changing cerebral structure.

Influence

• The influence of digital technology on human learning and memory processes is evident and circuits may have an advantage due to experience with analog elements.
• W. R. Uttal synthesizes that “Learning is a change in the state of a system produced by experience and is reflected in behavior”, distinguishing it from similar changes due to growth, or development.
• Memory refers to the states, conditions, images, or remains produced by the learning protocol that registers what has been learned.
• Learning is born from experience and is registered thanks to memory (Experience + Learning + Memory).
• In the digital consumption, the linearity of this relation is altered: virtual experiences, and the memory relies on technology, which can be positive in expanding networks with information.

Perception

• Some effects associated with altered human perception from intense technology interaction include the relationship between exposure to light sources and retinal lesions.
• Prolonged exposure to LEDs in devices can produce ocular lesions in the retina, with radiation damaging the visual system.
• Experiments showed that exposure to all LED light sources increases the percentage of cell death, especially those exposed to blue light.
• Reading on computers and smartphones makes complete reading difficult because the brain focuses on concrete details over meanings.

Cognitive Strain

• Increasing demands for multitasking, divided attention, and information overload from digital technologies may cause diminished cognitive function.
• The potential for distractions from computers reduces mental activity.
• Recent studies show the bright blue light from electronic device screens emits signals to sleep-inducing hormones like melatonin, changing sleep patterns and circadian rhythms.
• Short wavelength light [blue light] effects the shifting of phase of the Circadian clock and suppression of melatonin.

Phantom Vibration

• Phantom Vibration Syndrome relates to physically sensing noises from one’s phone.
• Several terms are related include Ringxiety (anxiety associated with the ringing or lack of the cell phone).
• It also relates to hypochondria or even false cell alarm.
• Some claim that the repeated action of listening triggers a series of reactions that stimulate specific sections of the brain resulting with that perception.
• The factors influencing the condition include medium number of vibrations / ringtones, the volume, frequency of the sound, the period of time under conditioning, as well as, brain chemistry.

Effects of Technology

• Predisposition to this condition may increase one’s chances of experiencing phantom vibrations.
• Tendency to not memorize data and lower the level of attention.
• Excessive support in the use of electronic devices and search engines tends to weaken memory.
• Adults who remember phone numbers memorized in childhood may not remember those of their current home or workplaces.
• Searching for information instead of memorizing it avoids long-term memory accumulation.
• Passive exposure to information when browsing the internet does not create a solid.
• The brain reinforces memory each time reminders are brought to mind, while it forgets irrelevant ones that distract.

Research

• "Digital amnesia" is when people are willing not to memorize important information relying on its immediate retrieval from a digital device.
• Visual skills may improve given high resolution with three-dimensionality and virtual reality.
• Quick-action games challenge the brain to process efficiently visual information by constantly shifting focus and remaining vigilant to events.
• Video games are often accused of causing violence however little scientific consensus.
• Technology increases creativity, with people continuously creating and sharing content mainly on social networks.
• FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) is fear of exclusion, a mix of anxiety and irritation experiencing others’ greater happiness via social media.
• Digital technology has transformed people’s habits, and the relationships that makes community.
• It should be able to strengthen culture and wellness face by the XXI century.