Google is Changing Your Brain

Neurons that fire together, wire together, so if you are reading this post, chances are you already have a Google brain. Opposing viewpoints about whether having a Google brain is a good thing or bad thing are discussed in Discover magazine's Google is Making Us Smarter and Atlantic Monthly's Is Google Making Us Stupid?.

Carl Zimmer argues that Google is making us smarter because our brains are seeking to extend themselves, grabbing onto new tools and "merging" with them. Likening our search activities to a monkey learning how to play with a rake, Zimmer suggests Google becomes our extended mind. To resist Google, Zimmer says, is a bit like Socrates worrying that writing (as opposed to oral history) would make people forgetful and unwise.

Nicholas Carr's perspective on Google is more circumspect. A Google brain himself, he broods on why he is having a hard time reading long arguments or great literature. Is he losing his concentration and his ability to reflect?

Studies of internet search behavior do indeed show the emergence of the Google generation (89% college students prefer the Internet for their start on any research project), but studies looking at the time spent on sites suggest that skimming rather than deep reading is what we do when we search on the Internet.

From a brain-based perspective, our bias is that expertise often comes at a cost. As more brain resources get devoted to particular tasks, others shrink and weaken.

First the PROS: Google learning...

1. Fosters school achievement Studies do show that computer users have an advantage in most core school subjects, home internet use correlated with higher reading achievement scores among low income children. Web proponents argue that high internet use about children promotes literacy because it encourages more reading and writing.
2. Exercises the brain In the figure above, a UCLA study argues Google does a brain good and raises the notion that Google search may help older brains stave off the effects of aging. Excerpt from the CNN article: "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..."
3. Promotes Inductive Learning Because Google effortlessly puts a vast warehouse of knowledge at one's fingertips, the Internet is a playground for inductie learning. Inductive learners like mounds of transdisciplinary data, traveling on hyperlinks, noticing incidental information, triggering loose associations - because all this stuff may help them organize what they think is true, common themes and rules. At its best, Google brains are creative, divergent, and flexible inductive thinkers.

But the CONS: Google learning also...

1. Fosters breadth over depth There may be an illusion of wider knowledge, but the skimming and search bias phenomenon are real. As a Google brain, you may more easily get what you're looking for, but spend less time reflecting on opposing opinions and questioning your assumptions and bias (including what you choose to search for). Googling also tends narrow the advantage between exact knowledge and imprecise or recognition knowledge ("I don't know, but I could find it on Google..."). This may be all right in many situations, but hazardous in others (do we really want everyone to be a big picture thinker?).
2. Fosters fast over slow Ala Blink, Google brains are more likely to become intolerant of slow - slow thinking, all the ruminating, and reflection that comes with critical analysis and really processes of any kind that require slowing down (reading great literature, difficult or highly technical books, etc.).
3. Fosters less downtime for the brain Related to this intolerance of slow, our Google brains also are changing to become overly dependent on the rewards of the Internet. As we get used to this frequent self-directed intellectual stimulation, we may find it hard to stop. Not only does this result in less downtime for our brains, but it also may cause complete exhaustion. Many studies have shown how important downtime in the brain is for creative thinking, but also sufficient brain rest is essential for working memory in general, all complex problem solving, and of course, error detection.

So Googler beware! There are thorns with the roses. Will this post change how you Google?

Other references or links:
Computer Users and School
Eide Neurolearning Blog: Brain of the Blogger
Invention at Play
Eide Neurolearning Blog: Daydreaming brain
Internet addiction

Gifted with a Learning Disability - A Brain-Based Framework for Understanding Twice Exceptional People

Since the 2004 re-authorization of the IDEA, twice exceptional students (students with gifted abilities or talents and LDs) have qualified for individualized educational support in the form of 504 accommodations or an IEP. That said, twice exceptional students are often overlooked in conventional school settings because their gifts may compensate enough to avoid identification for help, but not enough to avoid emotional problems and often gross academic achievement.

From Successful Strategies for Twice Exceptional Students above, it's easy to see how students' gifted abilities might be missed; often it is only parents or teachers who develop a close relationship with a student who notice advanced conceptual ability, abstract reasoning, self-initiated creative activities in the presence of otherwise lackluster academic performances. It's also worthwhile noting how often secondary social, emotional, or behavioral problems erupt making the sources of school underachievement difficult to identify.

Advances in our understanding of brain biology provide helpful insights into how twice exceptional abilities arise; also they raise important issues about how they should best be identified, accommodated, and taught.

1. Twice Exceptionality Often Runs in Families - Structural Brain Differences

Although parents don't always think about their extended family tree when they are thinking about why their son or daughter is having trouble in school, it's important that they should. It's a rare teacher or doctor who will think to ask about whether a child's learning problems or "underachievement" runs in the family, and if parents or grandparents don't think about it, it may be highly likely that no one will. In addition to individual inherited factors contributing to giftedness and learning disability, assortative mating (tendency of like to marry like) can dramatically increase the likelihood of adults' learning differences being inherited by children (6-40x higher chance of a person with a reading disability marrying another with a reading disability! - see Hynd).

With advanced imaging and morphometric methods, its becoming easier to identify familial differences in brain organization (see Asymmetry and Dyslexia). Looking at Einstein's brain at left, is it any wonder that he found his most successful life's work using visual and spatial problem solving methods, and that he had an undistinguished start to his schooling and was a late talking child?

2. Dynamic Reorganization Ability in the Brain - Alternate Brain Pathways Can Compensate for Weakness



In the past 30 years, there have been dramatic advances in our understanding of how dynamic pathway remodeling exists in the brain. Partially redundant systems help us to accurately sense our environments, learn and remember, and plan and act.

Gifts Secondary to Disabilities

Partial redundancy provides a buffer system in the event of injury; if one system is injured, another increases its activity to take its place. At right, Shibata and colleagues found that the part of the brain that normal hears in congenitally deaf subjects was reorganized to 'see' - so although the deaf were unable to hear, their visual sensitivity was greater than normal hearing subjects because more brain resources were now devoted to seeing.

It is likely, then, that some twice exceptional abilities many occur as the result of the brain's compensatory drive from a deficit or injury. One practical implication for this idea is that a thorough search for strengths and gifts should be made in the setting of any disability.

Disabilities Secondary to Gifts

But in some cases, there is a suggestion that some disabilities or delays in development are secondary to gifts. In a study from Port Townsend (Sweetland), researchers found that the higher the IQ, the greater the likelihood of high VIQ/PIQ discrepancies (17% of a control sample had IQ subtest discrepancies of 18 points or more vs. 55% of a gifted sample). And there's that data from Giedd and colleagues showing that the higher the IQ in young children, the slower the development of prefrontal cortical thickness. Extreme ability or talent may result in slower time courses of development or stunting of other systems or pathways if resources are limited.

Different developmental time courses should also (in the best of all worlds) warrant appropriate curricular and other educational accommodations. For instance, if young gifted children were found to present as mixed dominant "late-bloomers", shouldn't demands for heavy bihemispheric activities be individualized (e.g. note-taking, writing to open-ended prompts) and instruction optimized for what we know to be well-developed?


Twice Exceptional Guidebook, Montgomery County
Eides Presentation: Twice Exceptional - Life at the Extremes pdf
Hynd: Neurobiological Reseach in Reading Disabilities and Implications for Autism Spectrum pdf
Superior nonverbal abilities in families with dyslexia - ppt
Eide Neurolearning Blog: Blessings and Burdens of High IQ

Boys Think in Pictures, Girls Think in Words

Here's an interesting study looking at the different ways boys and girls process language. At almost every age, girls trump the boys in terms of language performance, but the surprising finding in this study was that strong performances were activated by different brain regions depending on gender. The implications? -boys and girls are wired to learn language differently.

Among the strong language performers who were girls, fMRI activations were highest in "conventional" language areas such as the left inferior frontal gyrus or left middle temporal gyrus. Among the strong language performers who were boys, however, the highest brain activation areas were visual association and imagery areas if words were presented visually or sound association (phonology) areas if the words were presented aurally.

Excerpt: "The pattern of accuracy correlations suggests that girls’ linguistic
judgments depended on information available to the language network regardless of the
modality of word presentation, whereas accurate performance for boys depended on the
modality of word presentation rather than the linguistic judgment required. These dramatic sex differences in the pattern of brain-behavior correlations reflect fundamental differences in the nature of processing required for accurate performance."

Whereas girls are processing words within the brain's language networks, boys' processing is more associational and link tied to the mode in which words are presented (e.g. by sight vs. sound).

The boys data is particularly interesting for the dyslexic boys we see. We've noticed that they are able to better remember sight spelling words like through if they are pictured with a doodle that reinforces the unusual part of spelling as well as its meaning.

Other interesting boys, girls learning posts:
Eide Neurolearning Blog: Visual Learning
Eide Neurolearning Blog: Slower developmental processing speed for boys

If you would like our Visual Spelling Card Homonyms printed on business card stock, they are available for $7.95 with free shipping:

Career Success of Adult Dyslexics

"It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between." — C.S. Lewis

We've been reading a great old book over the New Years holidays - Margaret Rawson's Dyslexia over the Lifespan, a 55 year longitudinal study of a group of 56 boys attending a school for dyslexia (Rawson put finishing touches on the book when she was 93 years old!).

The Rose Valley School seems to have had a large population of gifted dyslexics. IQs ranged from 94 to 185, and the median Binet IQ was 131. 20 of the boys were moderately to severely dyslexic. Their dyslexia was diagnosed between the ages of 6 and 12 years. Following these kids over a 55 year period showed a positive future awaiting these kids - something that is often overlooked when a child is found to be dyslexic.

All Rawson's students would graduate high school, with 48 out of 56 earning at least baccalaureate degrees. Even among the lowest language facility group at the school, students averaged 6 years of higher education. Schools attended were impressive: Harvard, Yale, Columbia, University of Pennsylvania, Swarthmore...

The roster of occupations among the lowest language facility group consisted of: 2 medical doctors (both research scientists and one PhD in biochemistry and college professor), 1 lawyer, 2 college professors, 2 research scientists (other than medical), 3 business owners, 3 "middle management", 1 school principal, 1 secondary school teacher with MA, 1 secondary school teacher with BA, 1 actor, 1 factory foreman, and 1 skilled laborer in training.

Rawson's conclusions: "Conservatively one can say that these dyslexics have made at least as good records as their nondyslexic fellows." (actually the data suggested better than the general population) Rawson adds, "the evidence clearly shows that dyslexics cannot be judged to be poor risks on the basis of language disability alone."



How crucial! Young bright dyslexics need to learn that they are late bloomers - and that once they bloom, they will be able to achieve at high levels in diverse creative occupations. The gloomiest time for dyslexics will be their elementary school and middle school years. In high school, college, and graduate school if they choose it, work will become easier and successes more common. As one very successful dyslexic dad told us..."then suddenly I seemed to be getting smarter and smarter, and the other students seemed to be getting dumber..."

Some additional helpful links, Adult occupational success of adult dyslexic boys pdf at the Gow School (below), and Growing up with dyslexia pdf.

Rawson's book is an important reminder for all of us parents and professionals - no dyslexic child should grow up without an positive vision about their future. From the Ingesson study, "Many of the individuals, who were employed, now felt that school had been an extended torment, and they emphasized how much better off they were after having left school than they could ever have imagined."