Study Reveals Google Search Increases Brain Intelligence

Many of us in the Tech community tend to have a smug ego-centric assumption that we technically-savvy  web 2.0 geeks are smarter. According to a new study from UCLA, our smug assumption is correct.  Google search DOES make your smarter, actually it doubles your neural activity in the decision-making and complex reasoning part of the brain. The more experienced searcher you are, the higher your neural activity. The study used live MRI brain scans to monitor brain activity comparing online search engine pages with book pages.

“There’s so much interest in exercising our minds as we age,” said the researcher, Dr. Gary Small, a professor at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA. “One result of this study is that these technologies are not all bad. They may be good in keeping our brains active.”

To study what brains look like when people are searching the Internet, Small recruited two groups of people: one that had minimal computer experience and another that was Web savvy.

Members of the technologically advanced group had more than twice the neural activation than their less experienced counterparts while searching online. Activity occurred in the region of the brain that controls decision-making and complex reasoning, according to Small’s study, which appears in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.

Small said he can’t pinpoint why there was more brain activity in the experienced users.

(above) Brain While Reading a Book

(above) Brain While Searching Google

“The way I theorized is that when we are confronted with new mental challenges, we don’t know how to deal with it,” he said. “We don’t engage neural circuits. Once we figure out a strategy, we engage those circuits. ”

In the study, 24 people were divided into the two groups, who were similar in age ranging from 55 to 78 years old, sex and educational achievement. Their only difference was their technological experience.

The number of people in the study was small, “but adequate to see a difference between the groups. It was so significantly different,” Small said.

The subjects went into the magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, scanner, which is like a large tunnel. The MRI monitored their brain activity while the subjects strapped on goggles, through which they saw a book page or an Internet search page.

They were given search tasks such as finding out how to choose a car or looking up the benefits of eating chocolate or drinking coffee. They had buttons and keyboards to conduct a simulated online search.

Their other task was to read pages laid out like a book.

“The bottom line is, when older people read a simulated book page, we see areas of the brain activated that you’d expect, the visual cortex, and areas that control language and reading,” he said. “When they search on the Internet, they use the same areas, but there was much greater activation particularly in the front part, which controls decision-making and complex reasoning. But it was only for the people who had previous experience with the Internet.”

Small has written a book, “iBrain,” which examines the impact of technology on the human brain and said he wants to conduct further studies on the effects of technology on the organ.

Small encourages older adults to learn how to use search engines and said, “This could be exercising their brain and their neural circuitry in a way that’s helpful.”

~ Erika from Technology Goddess