My avatar, my self

Neuroscientists are looking into the relationship between self and avatar. A study of World of Warcraft players in their 20s (14 men and 1 woman) who spend an average of 23 hours a week in the game/world was recently presented at the Society of Neuroscience, NewScientist.com reports. From fMRI scans of the players' brains, the study found "next to no difference" in activity in the areas of the brain involved in self-reflection and judgment at times when the players were thinking about their virtual selves vs. times when they were thinking about their actual selves. "Disentangling how the brain regards avatars versus real individuals may help explain why some people spend large chunks of their life playing immersive online games," the study's lead author, Kristina Caudle, a social neuroscientist at Dartmouth University, said. In future, she wants "to study volunteers who spend less time playing World of Warcraft to see if there are differences in how their brains discriminate between real and virtual worlds."

Net stimulates the brain: Study

A study presented this month at the Society for Neuroscience found that Internet training "could potentially enhance brain function and cognition in older adults," ScienceDaily.com reports. Researchers at University California, Los Angeles, worked with two groups of "neurologically normal volunteers between the ages of 55 and 78." Everything else being pretty equal, one group was made up of regular Internet users, the other had very little online experience. The latter group "performed Web searches while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans, which recorded the subtle brain-circuitry changes experienced during this activity." After training and just seven days of an hour a day of Web research over a period of two weeks, the newly Net-savvy group "were able to trigger key centers in the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning," displaying "brain activation patterns very similar to those seen in the group of savvy Internet users." Here's a host of coverage.

Teenage brain: Fresh perspective

For a long time, most adults have assumed that teens take risks and act impulsively because their brains aren't fully developed. It's the explanation we hear a lot for their "immaturity." And although some very reputable publishers have reported on the "teenage brain" - e.g., PBS Frontline, Harvard Magazine, and the National Institute of Mental Health – one academic researcher I know even calls this "pop science." Well, a new study at Emory University really reinforces the pop-science perspective and could end up turning the developing-brain theory upside down. It found that "the brains of teens who behave dangerously are more like adult brains than are those of their more cautious peers," Scientific American reports. At least two observations undermine the theory that the impulse-control, executive part of the brain develops later than the emotional part, it says: "First, American-style teen turmoil is absent in more than 100 cultures around the world, suggesting that such mayhem is not biologically inevitable. Second, the brain itself changes in response to experiences, raising the question of whether adolescent brain characteristics are the cause of teen tumult or rather the result of lifestyle and experiences." Certainly nothing's completely clear yet, but the term "teenage brain" already feels dated and a little disrespectful.

Social networking 'infantilizing' users' brains?

The social-networking backlash is taking a new form as we move past the predator panic's peak. A fresh sign of digital-non-native uneasiness about the social Web concerns its neurological and psychological impact. Oxford University neuroscientist and Baroness Susan Greenfield made headlines today with her comment that social network sites are "infantilizing the brain," reminding her "of the way that 'small babies need constant reassurance that they exist'," as quoted in The Guardian, The Daily Mail, a New York Times blog, and many other news outlets. Among other things, these social-media critics seem to think that "real life" and online socializing are entirely mutually exclusive, when research shows that - among teens, at least - online socializing is very grounded in their offline social lives. Times blogger Robert Mackey is more analytical than the British reports, thankfully, pointing out what appears to be a very superficial understanding of how social sites are being used. I'd dearly love to hear Dr. Greenfield and Dr. Aric Sigman (whose comments appeared in the BBC's "Online networking 'harms health'" last week) debate social media researchers Mimi Ito at Stanford University and danah boyd - or Canadian author of Born Digital, Dan Tapscott, who says, yes, digital natives' brains are being wired differently, but that's a positive (see Yahoo Canada). Cross-disciplinary study of what's happening in a medium whose uses and users are as diverse as humanity itself would be good! [I loved the readers' comments under the Times blog, one of which was: "Let’s give this an honest headline, shall we? 'Two Neuroscientists Hypothesize Social Networking Bad, Offer No Data'"! Your comments would be most welcome too - in this blog, in our ConnectSafely forum, or via email - anne(at)netfamilynews.org)!]