Does the internet rewire your brain互联网重塑大脑.doc

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1、Does the internet rewire your brain?互联网重塑大脑?This modern age has brought with it a new set of worries. As well as watching our weight and worrying about our souls, we now have to worry about our brain fitness too if you believe the headlines. Is instant messaging eroding the attention centres of our

2、brains? Are Facebook, Twitter and other social media tools preventing you from forming normal human bonds? And dont forget email apparently it releases the same addictive neurochemicals as crack cocaine! Plenty of folk have been quick to capitalise on this neuro-anxiety. Amazons virtual shelves groa

3、n with brain-training books and games. (I confess I am not entirely innocent myself). You can fight the cognitive flab, these games promise, if you work that grey matter like a muscle. But is this true? Are sudoku puzzles the only thing stopping the species turning into a horde of attention-deficien

4、t, socially-dysfunctional, email addicts part human, part smartphone? Fear not, there is some good news from neuroscience. But first, it is my duty to tell you the bad news. You may want to put down your phone and take note, this is the important bit. The truth is that everything you do changes your

5、 brain. Everything. Every little thought or experience plays a role in the constant wiring and rewiring of your neural networks. So there is no escape. Yes, the internet is rewiring your brain. But so is watching television. And having a cup of tea. Or not having a cup of tea. Or thinking about the

6、washing on Tuesdays. Your life, however you live it, leaves traces in the brain. Brain workout Worrying about the internet is just the latest in a long line of fears society has had about the changes technologies might bring. People worried about books when they first became popularly available. In

7、Ancient Greece, Socrates worried about the effect of writing, saying it would erode young peoples ability to remember. The same thing happened with television and telephones. These technologies did change us, and the way we live our lives, but nothing like the doom-mongers predicted would stem from

8、them. But is the internet affecting our brains in a different, more extraordinary way? There is little evidence to suggest harm. Here we are, millions of us, including me and you, right now, using the internet, and we seem okay. Some people worry that, even though we cannot see any ill-effects of th

9、e internet on our minds, there might be something hidden going on. I am not so worried about this, and Ill tell you why We regularly do things that have a profound effect on our brains such as reading or competitive sports with little thought for our brain fitness. When scientists look at people who

10、 have spent thousands of hours on an activity they often see changes in the brain. Taxi drivers, famously, have a larger hippocampus, a part of the brain recruited for navigation. Musicians brains devote more neural territory to brain regions needed for playing their instruments. So much so, in fact

11、, that if you look at the motor cortex of string players you see bulges on one side (because the fine motor control for playing a violin, for example, is only on one hand), whereas the motor cortex of keyboard players bulges on both sides (because piano playing requires fine control of both hands).

12、So practice definitely can change our brains. By accepting this notion, though, we replace a vague worry about the internet with a specific worry: if we use the internet regularly, what are we practicing? Get a life In the absence of any substantial evidence, I would hazard a guess that the majority

13、 of internet use is either information search or communication, using email and social media. If this is so, using the internet should affect our brains so that we are better at these things. Probably this is already happening, part of a general cultural change which involves us getting better and b

14、etter at dealing with abstract information. 互联网改变了你的大脑，但喝杯咖啡也同样可以。问题应该是，我们运用了哪部分的大脑？ 现代生活给我们带来了诸多隐忧：监测我们的体重、担忧我们的灵魂，现在我们还担心我的们大脑健康（如果你相信标题所说）。即时信息的输入会损害我们的大脑注意中心吗？脸书、推特和其他交流工具影响你大脑联结的正常形成吗？别忘记还有EMAIL，显然它对大脑有成瘾作用，就跟可卡因一类的神经化学药物一 样。 许多人马上利用了这一神经性焦虑，使之商业化，亚马逊的网络书架上挤满了各种训练大脑的书籍和游戏（好吧我承认我也不能免俗），这些游戏允诺，如果

15、你可以像运动肌肉一样灵活运用你的大脑灰质，就可以抵抗认知能力松弛。 但是是真的么? 数独真是唯一可以防止人变得注意力涣散、社会性功能失调、邮件成瘾的游戏？使人变成半人类半智能手机？ 先不用担忧，神经科学家给我们带来了曙光，不过在这之前，我有义务先告诉你坏消息，放下手机拿起笔记仔细听好了。 真相是：你所做的任何事情都会改变你的大脑。所有事情！ 任何细微的想法和经验都在不停地构建和重构建你的大脑，没有人可以例外。是的，互联网正在建构你的大脑，但仅仅看电视也一样，喝杯茶也一样，或者仅仅想在星期二洗个衣服。无论你如何经营你的生活，它都在你的大脑留下印记。 大脑训练 过去这些年社会一直在忧虑信息技术给社

16、会带来了什么改变，对互联网的担忧只是最近期的。在书籍刚普及时，人们也对书本怀抱疑虑。古希腊时期，苏格拉底对写作感到焦虑，认为它会腐蚀年轻人的记忆力，同样的恐慌也发生在对电视和电话之上。这些技术确实改变了我们和我们的生活，但是它们并不会带来世界末日。 还是说互联网在以一种特别不同的方式影响着我们的大脑呢？目前还没有证据表明它对大脑产生伤害。我们大家，你和我，上亿万计的人们，此时此刻，都在使用着互联网，而我们似乎都一切安好。有些人认为虽然看不到什么互联网之于大脑的不良后果，但可能存在某些隐藏的效应。我对此并不是很担心，让我告诉你为什么。 我们常常做对大脑有深刻影响的事儿，一些需要运用大脑思考的事儿

17、，譬如阅读和竞争性的运动。当科学家们检测经常性做这些活动的人的大脑，都能发现他们的大脑发生了变化。最典型是的士司机，有着比常人大的海马体，这是一个用于空间定位的大脑结构；音乐家的大脑运用了更大块的脑区来演奏乐器。事实上，如果你看管弦乐音乐家负责运动区域的大脑皮层，你还可以在一边的皮层上看到凸起，因为拉小提琴的运动控制只需要一只手，而钢琴音乐家的运动皮层则两边都有凸起，因为弹钢琴需要运用到双手。 所以练习必然能引起大脑的改变，有鉴于此，我们把担忧的问题改成：如果我们规律地使用互联网，那我们是在练习什么？ 过有趣的生活 在缺少实际证据情况下，我推测，大多数人使用互联网是用来查询信息和用邮件等媒介交

18、流，这样的话，使用这些东西会影响我们的脑，改变我们的大脑使它更好地应对这些问题。可能这些变化已经发生了，一部分的人类文化，包括我们自己在内，对处理抽象的信息越来越在行。 只有在我们学会了更多其他生活技能后，互联网使用才会成担忧，如果脸书妨碍了人们面对面的交流，那将会产生很大的危害。但证据表明并非如此，如果那些活跃在网上的人也有着更多的“出世”的生活，我们大多数人只是把上网做为现实生活的补充，而非现实生活的替代品。 因此互联网并不存在不可思议的威胁，就如同此前的电视一样，与再之前的书籍阅读一样，它们都为我们提供了学习练习新事物的机会。练习会改变大脑，就如形成某样习惯一样。重点的是我们是这一过程的

19、一分子，而不是某样东西发生在我们身上。你可以决定你要花多少时间去找一张可爱猫咪的图片、在脸书上调侃别人，或是把你的想法糅合成140个字表达出来。这些事儿都不会对你的大脑造成伤害，也不会给你个大惊喜。你可能会傻傻地以为互联网会带给你所有大脑训练的必要练习，但你也很可能会错过这一切，包括可爱猫咪的图片。 How to Quit Your Job, Move to Paradise and Get Paid to Change the World如何辞掉工作、拥抱天堂同时赚到钱呢？How to Quit Your Job, Move to Paradise and Get Paid to Chang

20、e the World This guest post is by Jon Morrow of Copyblogger. After all, thats the dream, right? Forget the mansions and limousines and other trappings of Hollywood-style wealth. Sure, it would be nice, but for the most part, we bloggers are simpler souls with much kinder dreams. We want to quit our

21、jobs, spend more time with our families, and finally have time to write. We want the freedom to work when we want, where we want. We want our writing to help people, to inspire them, to change them from the inside out. Its a modest dream, a dream that deserves to come true, and yet a part of you mig

22、ht be wondering Will it? Do you really have what it takes to be a professional blogger, or are you just being dumb? Is it realistic to make enough money from this to quit your job, or is that just silly? Can you really expect people to fall in love with what you write, or is that just wishful thinki

23、ng? Sure, its fun to dream about your blog taking off and changing your life, but sometimes you wonder if its just that: a dream. This is the real world, and in the real world, dreams dont really come true. Right? Well, let me tell you a little story How I quit my job In April of 2006, I was hit by

24、a car going 85 miles an hour. I didnt see him coming, and I dont remember much about the accident, but I do remember being pulled out of my minivan with my shirt on fire. The front end of the van was torn off, gasoline was everywhere, and my legs were broken in 14 places. My van For the next three m

25、onths, I had nothing to do but endure the pain and think about my life. I thought about my childhood. I thought about my dreams. I thought about my career. And overall, I decided I didnt like the way things were going. So I quit. I sold everything I owned. I stopped paying most of my bills. I turned

26、 in my letter of resignation, worked my two weeks, and then disappeared without saying goodbye. Hearing about my insanity, a friend called and asked me, “Well, what are you going to do now?” “I dont know, ” I told him. “Maybe start a blog.” And so thats what I did. For the next three months, I didnt

27、 just tinker around with blogging. I dedicated myself to it. I started work at 8 AM in the morning, and I kept going until 11 PM at night. I didnt watch television. I didnt see my friends. From morning till night, I was writing, reading, and connecting with other bloggers. Nothing else. Within a mon

28、th, I had On Moneymaking off the ground, and within two months, it was getting 2, 000 visitors a day and Performancing nominated it for the best business/money blog of the year. A couple of months after that, Brian Clark asked me to become the Associate Editor of Copyblogger, and so I sold On Moneym

29、aking for five figures and went to work at one of the most popular blogs at the world. And amazingly, thats just the beginning of the story. How I moved to paradise Have you ever woken up one day and realized you secretly despise everything about where you live? The weather is horrible. Your neighbo

30、rs are jerks. You dont like inviting anyone to your home, because its always a wreck, and youre ashamed of how it looks. Well, thats exactly what happened to me in January of 2009. I was sitting in my pathetic apartment, wrapped up in blankets to keep warm, trying to get some work done on the comput

31、er, when it struck me how monumentally stupid it was. I was a full-time blogger, for Gods sakes. I could do my work from anywhere in the world. Why on Earth was I living in this hellhole? The only problem was I had no idea where I wanted to go, but a couple of weeks later, the telephone rang, and it

32、 was an old friend who had retired to Mazatlan, Mexico. As usual, he was calling to gloat about the weather and the food and the general superiority of the Mexican lifestyle, but instead of just suffering through it this time, I stopped him and said, “No, dont tell me any more. Im moving there.” “Wh

33、at? When?” he stammered. “I dont know exactly when, ” I told him, “but Im starting right now.” Two months later, I took a one-week trip to scout it out and look for places to live. When I got back, I started selling all of my stuff, packing the rest of it into storage, and saying goodbye to friends.

34、 Almost one year to the day after our phone call, I hopped in the car and drove just shy of 3, 000 miles to my new beachfront condo in the finest resort in Mazatlan. As I write this, Im sitting on my balcony with my laptop, watching (no kidding) dolphins jumping out in the Pacific. Its a sunny day,

35、theres a nice breeze, and Im thinking about ordering a pia colada from the restaurant downstairs. My office Lucky me, right? Well, what might surprise you is I left out a piece of the story. Its the part where I have a fatal disease, I cant move from the neck down, and yet I essentially get paid to

36、help people. Lets talk about that part next. Yours truly The worst part about having a disease like SMA isnt how everyone treats you like a charity case. Its not the frustration, anger, or depression. Its not even the inability to reach over and pinch a cute girls butt when you want to (although tha

37、ts pretty bad). No, the worst part is the freakin bills. The doctors. The medication. The nurses. I added it all up, and the total cost of keeping me alive in the US was $127, 000 a year. Thats not rent. Thats not food. Thats just medical expenses. Granted, I didnt actually have to pay all that. I h

38、ad private insurance, Medicaid, other government aid programs, but all that support comes at a price: they control you. The government allotted me only $700 a month to live on, and I had to spend every single cent above that on medical expenses, or they would cut me off. So for years, thats what I d

39、id. If I made $5, 000 one month, I set aside $700 for living expenses, and I spent the other $4, 300 on medical bills. Nothing was left. Ever. And eventually, I got sick of it. I wanted to make money without having to worry about losing my healthcare. I wanted to take care of my family, instead of t

40、hem always having to take care of me. I wanted to actually live somewhere nice, not some ratty little apartment built for folks below the poverty line. The only problem was, it just wasnt possible for me in US. No matter how I played with the numbers, I couldnt make it work. So, I did something craz

41、y: I quit Medicaid. I moved to Mexico. I stopped worrying about myself at all and started a business based on one simple idea: Helping people. I found up-and-coming writers who wanted a mentor, and I trained them. I found businesses who wanted to cash in on social media, and I developed their strate

42、gy. I found bloggers who wanted more traffic, and I created a course on how to get it. In exchange, they paid me what they could. Some folks gave me $50 an hour and others $300 an hour, but I treated them all the same, and I dedicated myself to making their dreams a reality. The results? Within two

43、months, I was making so much money so fast PayPal shut down my account under suspicions of fraudulent activity. Today, not only am I making more than enough to take care of myself, but a couple of months ago, I got uppity and bought my father a car. Do you understand how precious that is? For a guy

44、who cant move from the neck down to buy his father a car? And the best part is, Im not making money doing mindless drudgery. Im changing peoples lives. Every day, I get emails from readers who say my posts have changed their thinking. Every day, I get emails from students who say my advice has chang

45、ed their writing. Every day, I get emails from clients who say my strategies have changed the way they do business. I cant really believe it. Normally, a guy like me would be wasting away in a nursing home somewhere, watching television and waiting to die, but here I am speaking into a microphone an

46、d essentially getting paid to change the world. If my fingers worked, Id pinch myself. And heres the thing: I dont want it for just me. I want it for you too. The reason I told you this whole story wasnt just to brag but also to convince you of one incontrovertible point: YOU CAN DO THIS! You want t

47、o quit your job and become a professional blogger? You can. You want to travel around the world, living life to its fullest? You can. You want to dedicate your every hour to helping people and making the world a better place? You can. Because listen I know its horribly clich, but if I can quit my jo

48、b, risk the government carting me off to a nursing home because I cant afford my own healthcare, convince my poor mother to abandon her career and drive my crippled butt 3, 000 miles to a foreign country, and then make enough money to support myself, my mother, my father, and an entire nursing staff using nothing but my voice, then what can you accomplish if you really set your mind to it? My guess: pretty much anything. No, it wont be easy. At some point, I guarantee youll want to quit. I guarantee people will treat you like youre insane. I guarantee youll cry