Columbo the Metaller

**flea** · June 25, 2009

**qweff110** · July 1, 2009

Like most things, the Internet has its good and its dark side. And, considering the pervasiveness of the

Internet in society, wow gold it is certainly having an effect on our brains.

After all, everything we do affects our brain. Though up until the 1980’s, it was universally believed that

the steam engine was the foremost invention of the Industrial Revolution, technology and science historian,

Lewis Mumford, had long before proposed that that clock was in fact the key machine of the modern Industrial

age. buy wow gold And, just as people began operating and planning

according to seconds and minutes, in the age of the internet, we are rewiring our “plastic” brain to

function more and more like computers. Processing, decoding and storing floods of information at a rate

faster than we ever have before, our brains are becoming highly adapted to taking on scores of tasks at once.

A 2008 study conducted by the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA found that middle-

aged and older adults who spent time browsing the web not only boosted their brain power but also could help

prevent cognitive decline such as Alzheimer’s disease and dementia later on in life.

The study looked wow power leveling at the brain activity of 24

neurologically normal volunteers between the ages of 55 and 76. Half had experience web surfing, the other

half did not. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans the scientists recorded the brain-

circuitry changes (the blood flow through the brain) and compared them as the patients performed web searches

and as they read book passages.

A remarkable finding was that though all participants showed significant brain activity during book-reading

tasks,

correspond to language, reading, memory and visual abilities, the web-savvy group also registered activity in

the areas of the brain which control decision-making and complex reasoning. With the wealth of choices

available on the net, knowing how to perform the most effective searches and making decisions on what to

click on, engages important cognitive circuits in the brain. This finding also demonstrated that our brains

are sensitive, or,“plastic”, cheap wow gold and can continue to learn

as we grow older.

So spending time on the Internet can be beneficial as you get older, but what about when you’re young?

According to researchers from Michigan State University, home Internet access can be a good educational tool,

especially for hard-to-reach populations. Also, it has had positive effects on the academic performance of

low-income, mostly African American children and teenagers.

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