At Gord Hotchkiss’ site we can find interesting interview with dr Teena Moody from UCLA’s Semel Institute, who conducted survey on how human’s brain work during searching the web. The research is based on the method name as functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). Main goal of this research was to find out on the scale of differences between human’s brain work during reading and searching the web. Another dimension of the research was to check if there are any differences between different grops of people - heavy users and novices.

Magnetic resonance revealed that brains of novices, named by dr Moody Internet-naive persons, during searching the web behave at the same way as they were reading, on the other hand heavy users’ brains work more activelly, more brain centers are active. Especially front and limbic lobes are being used by heavy-searchers. These two lobes are responsible for making decisions and conflict settlement.

Brain centres active during searching the web for heavy-users and novices:

Explanation for that fact is quite simple, using the Internet changes our brain work procedures, people who do not use Internet everyday behave like children in the mist - they just fell lost in new enviroment and act like they were reading it, gathering the information to get the full scope of view. However heavy-users make decisions basing on the information the just have found in perfectly known enviroment.

This partly supports thesis that using Internet changes our brains.

-mw