Seriousness Susan Greenfield on the future of the brain - Page 2

TGS · 12-19-2010, 05:56 PM

Susan Greenfield might be wrong about what she says about the changes to brains and cognitive functioning arising from many hours spent interacting with a screen. Most of what she says in the video is not contentious, it is accepted - if somewhat simplified - neuroscience. She is not a crackpot but a well established brain scientist and scientific popularizer - well known in the UK at least. Dismissing her as a crackpot is stupid.

ardeegee · 12-19-2010, 07:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TGS

Dismissing her as a crackpot is stupid.

And yet, I will continue to do so.

Her kind have been around for as long as humanity-- those passing into their elder years without the benefit of being able to adapt to change, who spend their lives griping about how the youth today don't share the same interests as they did in their childhood, therefore leading to cultural decay. Here it is being said by Socrates:

"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."

The clueless elderly said that comic books would destroy young minds. They said TV would destroy young minds. They said that Jazz would destroy young minds. They said that rock and roll would destroy young minds. And now the clueless elderly are saying that video games and the internet will destroy young minds. The minds of my generation were not destroyed by Pac-Man and Donkey Kong and Super Mario Brothers and the minds of the current young generation will not destroyed by Facebook and Grand Theft Auto-- and as another generation of the clueless elderly die off, their complaints about the young whiper-snappers and their video games destroying the world will be just as laughable as the claims made by the clueless elderly of the past.

http://chrismcr.blogspot.com/2009/02...why-susan.html

http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=36613

FlorenceArt · 12-20-2010, 02:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ardeegee

And yet, I will continue to do so.

Her kind have been around for as long as humanity-- those passing into their elder years without the benefit of being able to adapt to change, who spend their lives griping about how the youth today don't share the same interests as they did in their childhood, therefore leading to cultural decay. Here it is being said by Socrates:

"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."

The clueless elderly said that comic books would destroy young minds. They said TV would destroy young minds. They said that Jazz would destroy young minds. They said that rock and roll would destroy young minds. And now the clueless elderly are saying that video games and the internet will destroy young minds. The minds of my generation were not destroyed by Pac-Man and Donkey Kong and Super Mario Brothers and the minds of the current young generation will not destroyed by Facebook and Grand Theft Auto-- and as another generation of the clueless elderly die off, their complaints about the young whiper-snappers and their video games destroying the world will be just as laughable as the claims made by the clueless elderly of the past.

Glad to see you finally decided to enter the discussion.

What you say about the "X will destroy young mind" meme is true, but does that mean that she is necessarily wrong to ask questions? To paraphrase one of your quotes, just because this kind of claim has been wrong in the past doesn't mean that it couldn't be true this time.

However, although I don't think she's a crackpot, I feel there is something wrong about what she is saying. She is not making any pseudo-scientific claims, in the sense that she doesn't claim that there is scientific evidence for what she says, but she is clearly using her credibility as a scientist to give weight to non-scientific assertions, which is wrong. Especially given what some media will do with this kind of assertion.

I still think it's a subject worth scientific study, and I know there have been some. I remember for instance this NYT article about multi-tasking.

TGS · 12-20-2010, 07:14 AM

If there is a problem with Susan Greenfield's position it seems to be more to do with language she uses that anything else. What she seems to be saying is "if people do X then Y will happen - and I am calling "Y" damage because I don't like it". Brain plasticity is the non-contentious part of what she is saying - if young people spend 40% of their time doing A, the patterns of synaptic firing that become established will be different from the patterns of synaptic firing that become established of they don't spend 40% of their time doing A - if you practice playing scales on violin for two hours a day you will get much better at playing scales on violin than if you don't practice.

Doing the things that young people do will make their brains different from how they would have been if they didn't do those things. The contentious issue is what is the nature of those differences and how they cash out in terms of what they mean for the people whose brains have so developed.

Ben Goldacre used to be good - I suspect he has got himself trapped in having to produce copy for his various columns and his blog and as a consequence he is less good than he was.

FlorenceArt · 12-20-2010, 08:58 AM

It seems like more than a language issue to me, but yes, the main question would be, are the changes technology effects on our brain today bigger and, more importantly, more dangerous than, say, the effects by learning to read and write, or to cross the street at a busy intersection without getting run over by a car.

After all, technology has been rewiring our brain at least since the invention of writing.

But the more I think about this, the more uneasy I get about her methods. As I said, she uses a lot of analogy in her arguments, and a lot of these analogies have a strong emotional content but not much logical strength.

For example, in the video she insisted a lot on the role of the pre-frontal lobe area of the brain as a sort of processor where we take immediate feelings and sensations and make sense of them, and also evaluate them in a long-term perspective (ice cream would be delicious right now, but I already had one yesterday and I know that if I eat ice cream every day I'm going to gain weight, so I choose to renounce the immediate reward of ice cream now in favor or the long term reward of not gaining weight - well, that's what I'm supposed to do anyway

)

Fine, I'm sure what she says is true, if simplified. But what is the connection with Internet and video games? She doesn't have a shred of evidence for her implicit hypothesis that these technologies have an impact on the development or activity of the pre-frontal lobe. I don't think she even said that she thinks there is an effect. She just piles up a bunch of unrelated scientific facts together with statistics on the use of technology by children, in a way that is sure to scare us by association.

If I remember correctly (the video is too long to watch it a second time), her argument sounded something like this:

- people with damage to their pre-frontal lobe become reckless
- people with schizophrenia (or was it another mental illness, I'm not sure) have an under-developed pre-frontal lobe area
- overweight people tend to have under-developed pre-frontal lobe areas
- between the age of 10 and 11, a (British) child will spend more hours in front of a screen than with his parents or her teacher

- and we are suppose to deduct from this... what?

And yet, if she really thinks that the use of technology can have a significant impact on the development of the pre-frontal lobe, it would seem to me that such a hypothesis would be relatively easy to test, for a scientist like her. It might be a bit harder to fund than research on Alzheimer's, but it does seem feasible. So why doesn't she do it?

happy_terd · 12-20-2010, 05:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ardeegee

The clueless elderly said that comic books would destroy young minds. They said TV would destroy young minds. They said that Jazz would destroy young minds. They said that rock and roll would destroy young minds. And now the clueless elderly are saying that video games and the internet will destroy young minds. The minds of my generation were not destroyed by Pac-Man and Donkey Kong and Super Mario Brothers and the minds of the current young generation will not destroyed by Facebook and Grand Theft Auto-- and as another generation of the clueless elderly die off, their complaints about the young whiper-snappers and their video games destroying the world will be just as laughable as the claims made by the clueless elderly of the past

They told me that I would go blind and I ended up needing glasses. That has got to count for something.

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12-19-2010, 05:56 PM	#16
TGS Country Member Posts: 9,058 Karma: 7676767 Join Date: Feb 2010 Location: Denmark Device: Liseuse: Irex DR800. PRS 505 in the house, and the missus has an iPad.	Susan Greenfield might be wrong about what she says about the changes to brains and cognitive functioning arising from many hours spent interacting with a screen. Most of what she says in the video is not contentious, it is accepted - if somewhat simplified - neuroscience. She is not a crackpot but a well established brain scientist and scientific popularizer - well known in the UK at least. Dismissing her as a crackpot is stupid.

12-20-2010, 07:14 AM	#19
TGS Country Member Posts: 9,058 Karma: 7676767 Join Date: Feb 2010 Location: Denmark Device: Liseuse: Irex DR800. PRS 505 in the house, and the missus has an iPad.	If there is a problem with Susan Greenfield's position it seems to be more to do with language she uses that anything else. What she seems to be saying is "if people do X then Y will happen - and I am calling "Y" damage because I don't like it". Brain plasticity is the non-contentious part of what she is saying - if young people spend 40% of their time doing A, the patterns of synaptic firing that become established will be different from the patterns of synaptic firing that become established of they don't spend 40% of their time doing A - if you practice playing scales on violin for two hours a day you will get much better at playing scales on violin than if you don't practice. Doing the things that young people do will make their brains different from how they would have been if they didn't do those things. The contentious issue is what is the nature of those differences and how they cash out in terms of what they mean for the people whose brains have so developed. Ben Goldacre used to be good - I suspect he has got himself trapped in having to produce copy for his various columns and his blog and as a consequence he is less good than he was.

12-20-2010, 08:58 AM	#20
FlorenceArt High Priestess Posts: 5,761 Karma: 5042529 Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: Montreuil sous bois, France Device: iPad Pro 9.7, iPhone 6 Plus	It seems like more than a language issue to me, but yes, the main question would be, are the changes technology effects on our brain today bigger and, more importantly, more dangerous than, say, the effects by learning to read and write, or to cross the street at a busy intersection without getting run over by a car. After all, technology has been rewiring our brain at least since the invention of writing. But the more I think about this, the more uneasy I get about her methods. As I said, she uses a lot of analogy in her arguments, and a lot of these analogies have a strong emotional content but not much logical strength. For example, in the video she insisted a lot on the role of the pre-frontal lobe area of the brain as a sort of processor where we take immediate feelings and sensations and make sense of them, and also evaluate them in a long-term perspective (ice cream would be delicious right now, but I already had one yesterday and I know that if I eat ice cream every day I'm going to gain weight, so I choose to renounce the immediate reward of ice cream now in favor or the long term reward of not gaining weight - well, that's what I'm supposed to do anyway ) Fine, I'm sure what she says is true, if simplified. But what is the connection with Internet and video games? She doesn't have a shred of evidence for her implicit hypothesis that these technologies have an impact on the development or activity of the pre-frontal lobe. I don't think she even said that she thinks there is an effect. She just piles up a bunch of unrelated scientific facts together with statistics on the use of technology by children, in a way that is sure to scare us by association. If I remember correctly (the video is too long to watch it a second time), her argument sounded something like this: - people with damage to their pre-frontal lobe become reckless - people with schizophrenia (or was it another mental illness, I'm not sure) have an under-developed pre-frontal lobe area - overweight people tend to have under-developed pre-frontal lobe areas - between the age of 10 and 11, a (British) child will spend more hours in front of a screen than with his parents or her teacher - and we are suppose to deduct from this... what? And yet, if she really thinks that the use of technology can have a significant impact on the development of the pre-frontal lobe, it would seem to me that such a hypothesis would be relatively easy to test, for a scientist like her. It might be a bit harder to fund than research on Alzheimer's, but it does seem feasible. So why doesn't she do it?

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