Susan Greenfield, Mind Change Meet the Author

often controversial. In her latest book she looks at the way digital

technology including video games virtual networks and the Internet

may be changing the way our minds work.

Your premise in this book, is that our brains are changeable and

adaptable. They respond to changes in the environment around us.

Digital technology means the environment is changing dramatically

therefore our brains must be changing. Let's look a couple of the

specific examples you use. Not a new one, fast paced video games may be

making us more aggressive. What is happening in the brain would you

say? Let's unpack that little bit because I don't think people realise

just how sensitive their brains are to the environment. It's not just

the environment of the digital world, it is the environment of

everyday life. That is why we occupy more ecological niche is than any

other species on the planet. This world compared to the normal world,

is two`dimensional, and as he have said it is very fast paced, just

hearing and vision. It is supernormal and super fast and the

brain will adapt to that. The kind of changes on seasonal changes in

attention, this is reflected in changes in brain scans, both in the

longer term and also in the shorter term, in terms of violin stimuli, it

has been shown that in a particular pathway in the brain if you present

the subject in an experiment with violin stimuli you see a

desensitisation. `` violin. That is to say a reduction of the activity

in this crucial area. Violent for the uses social networking harbours

unpromoted potentially vicious biochemical cycle. `` in the bit you

say. What does that mean? It is strange to think of the chemical

being vicious, it means a vicious cycle. Not that the chemical is

vicious. Let's start on the cycle all human beings love the dog about

themselves. The reason we love to talk about ourselves is because it

is the antidote being lonely. `` to talk. In evolutionary terms we know

loneliness is back for the health, it is in our evolution to want to

talk about yourself. `` bad for your health. In one experiment, human

subjects choose monetary, instead of monetary reward they choose to talk

about themselves. If you're given the choice of money or the

opportunity to talk about yourself you talk about yourself. The problem

talking about yourself is you are leaving yourself and vulnerable to

being attacked, not physically, but attacked in a psychological social

way. She has done is, and that, it has evolved body language. `` what

evolution has done. You wouldn't tell me a secret, you wouldn't tell

me much about yourself if I was like this with my eyes averted and my

eyes folded and looking away. If I was leaning forward as you are

obligingly doing now I would be more inclined to confide in you. Body

language has evolved as a very important means for allowing you to

have interpersonal very protected way. And under

certain situations. In social networking it is like taking off the

handbrake. You have your foot on the accelerator but there is no

handbrake and there was no one there to stop you talking about yourself.

So off you go. That makes you very vulnerable because now it means that

the so`called friends you have, an audience of 500 or more people, are

going to feel they can now comment in a way that you wouldn't comment

to a close friend face`to`face. You then feel very low self`esteem, but

at the same time, and enhanced narcissism because that is all you

have. In order to talk about yourself, to detect yourself you

invent a parody of yourself, someone who has lots of boyfriends and

girlfriends, and the real view has no friends and suffers a massive

vicious circle. `` real you. Is this what you say when social networking

undermines our sense of identity? Not quite but partly. What really

undermines our identity is the main fact that now your identity is

constructed externally. What you say in the book resonates intuitively

with people confronted by this. You try to give it some scientific

underpinning or explanation. It is because of the science I said it, I

didn't dream up ideas and cost around in the literature, the

science was there. Understood, and issue you come back to a number of

times in the book is whether or not coronation equates to causation.

Because we can see something happening in people and in the

outside world doesn't necessarily the changes, the behaviour in the

brain, are caused by that. `` correlation. This is something that

someone who is not a brain scientist does struggle with. We are used to

cause and effect. We are used to if I drop that on the floor it will

break and so one. With the brain, there is a chicken and egg problem,

in that now with the power of modern neuroscience we can look at changes

in brain structure and activity, changes and chemicals, and we can

correlate, we can match that up with subjective changes in mood. And

behaviour. Because of that, people I think expecting much of

neuroscience, they expect you to prove that one thing in the brain

causes this. It could be the other way round. It is probably both. In

the larger scale of things, in the act of writing the book, you have

issued causation, have you not? Why write a book unless you were intent

on pointing out that these changes in the brain resulting from an

increasing exposure to technology? Yes, the point, but I also say, I

for some papers where they say, is it a predisposition are certain

people more prone to things than others, in terms of the changes they

show. I hope they explain, people get irritated with scientists when

we used the subjunctive twice removed, it could be the case that

maybe... It is because science is always conditional. You call the

book might change, you draw an analogy with climate change can

really say they are two issues confronting us with which we need to

come to terms. Climate change, the signs around it, with a small

minority of people, is controversial. They accuse climate

change scientists of scaremongering. Are you scaremongering? What is the

and a wake`up call? We only know and a wake`up call? We only know

afterwards. Scaremongering is a conclusion you should reach, not a

premise you should start with. In retrospect it might be that it is a

wake`up call, in retrospect, when we say everyone to take things into our

own hands. Instead of sleepwalking into this, can't we harness the

computers to deliver something very exciting and beneficial rather than

just a shaming it is automatically wonderful. Thank you for joining us.

`` just assuming.