Colorful dreams, sensory hallucination, and 5 other ways tech rewired our brains

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The change technology exerts on the lives of humans extends beyond a societal one, affecting even our psychology as well. In Technology is proven to augment the brain’s neuroplasticity and alter its behavior based on new experiences, changing the way we dream, sleep, and our ability to stay focus. Many experts debate whether the lasting consequences are beneficial, enhancing our ability to consume information, or detrimental, hindering our ability to pay attention.

Colorful dreams
A 2008study conducted at Scotland’s Dundee University discovered that adults over the age of 55, who spent the early part of their lives watching black and white TV, are more likely to dream in black and white than in Color. By contrast, study participants who grew up in the age of Technicolor always experienced colored dreams. A second study held by American Psychological Association reaffirmed these findings in 2011.

Sensory hallucination
Ever feel like your phone is vibrating in your pocket only to realize there was no phone in your pocket? Well, that’s phantom vibration syndrome in action. Evidence gathered from multiple studies indicates that we’ve become super-conditioned into assuming our phones are in our pockets, so much so that our brain misinterprets physical sensations such as itches, as vibrating phones.

A study published in the journalComputers and Human Behavior discovered that 89% of the 290 students surveyed, reported to have experienced phantom vibrations approximately every two weeks. An investigation performed by clinical investigator, Michael Rothberg, echoed the same phenomenon, observing phantom vibrations amongst the majority of hospitals workers who carried electronics in their pockets.

Sleep deprivation
Peering into an bright screen right before your bed time is a guaranteed way to disrupt your circadian rhythm, the natural sleep cycle of most living things on Earth, and fool your body into thinking it’s daytime. Neuroscientists proclaim that exposure to the glowing light emanating from tablets, smartphones, and laptops will actually suppress the production of the hormones that make you fall asleep, resulting in insomnia.

Poor memory.
After testing 3,000 people across a varying age range, Neuroscientists Ian Robertson determined that the younger participants were less able to recall standard personal information than the older ones; many were unable to recall relative’s birthdays or their own phone numbers. Other studies conducted over the years echo similar findings, pointing out that heavy calculator dependency decrease simply math skills. WIRED’s Clive Thompson doesn’t necessarily see this as a bad thing “the line between where my memory leaves off and Google picks up is getting blurrier by the second…you could argue that by offloading data onto silicon, we free our own gray matter for more germanely ‘human’ tasks like brainstorming and daydreaming.”

Enhanced visual skills 
Research published in the Society for Personality and Social Psychology journal bore results of a more positive nature, highlighting the link between first-person shooter video games such as Call of Duty or Halo, and the increase in a person’s ability for fast-paced decision making/judgment.

Weak impulse control and attention
The same study listed above also found that the increase in visual interpretation skills come at a cost of a decrease in a person’s “proactive executive control,” or ability to inhibit impulsive behavior. The repercussion of this side-effect is magnified in light of aggressive behavior and overall attention. Social psychologists are amassing a growing body of evidence indicating that the same proactive control that decrease impulsive behavior also affects short term memory, “proactive cognitive control involves keeping information active in short-term memory for use in later judgments, a kind of task preparation,” explains Craig Anderson, Director of the Center for the Study of Violence at Iowa State University.

Greater cognitive flexibility
Other scientists are finding that strategy games, unlike their first-person shooter counterparts, actually improve multitasking and focus. A study led by neuroscientists Adam Gazzaley from the University of California, published on September, 3rd 2013, in Nature, demonstrated that playing a game called NeuroRacer improved the multitasking of the elderly participants to higher levels than that of the untrained younger participants in their twenties. The game requires players to race a vehicle down a windy road while simultaneously shooting random shapes and colors of particular combinations that pop up. The study also discovered that cognitive abilities unrelated to those being tested by the game ― sustained attention and working memory ― also improved as a direct result.

Story via Mashable