Neyrolingvist Tatyana Chernigov: How the Internet affects our brains Bashny.Net

Neyrolingvist and experimental psychologist, doctor of philology and biology, corresponding member of the Norwegian Academy of Science Tatyana Chernigov gave a lecture "How the Internet has changed our brains", which dispelled the popular stereotypes about the brain and tell you why "Google" and on-line education is not so helpful as they seem. Here is a brief summary of this chapter.


What you need to know about the brain in the first place?


brain recipe is: 78% water, 15% fat and the remainder - proteins, and potassium salt hydrate. There is nothing more difficult in the universe of what we know and that is comparable with the brain at all. Before proceeding directly to the subject of how the Internet has changed our brains, I tell you, on the basis of current data, about how the brain learns and how it is changing.

We can say that now began the fashion for brain research and consciousness. Especially consciousness, although this is dangerous territory, because no one knows what it is. The worst, and it is the same and the best thing you can say about it is that I know what I am. It is in English called the first firsten experience, ie experience in the first person. This is something we hope that there is almost no public animal and yet have artificial intelligence.

However, I always scare all that close to the time when artificial intelligence is aware of himself as a kind of individuality. At this point, he will have his plans, your motives, your goals, and, I assure you, we will not go in this sense. This, of course, understandable, filmmaking, etc. Remember the "superiority" with Johnny Depp, about how people dying, connected to the network itself? At the premiere of the film in St. Petersburg during the show I heard behind him, as one man to another says: "The script wrote Chernigov»

. Subject of the brain became popular, people began to realize that the brain - a mysterious powerful thing by mistake for some reason we call "my mind." To do this, we have absolutely no reason: who is whose - this is a separate issue
. That is, he was with us in the skull, in this sense, we can call it "my". But it is incomparably more powerful than you. "You want to say that the brain and I - it's different" - you ask. The answer is: yes. The authorities of the brain we do not, he decides himself. And it puts us in a very delicate position. But there is one trick of the mind: the brain itself makes all the decisions, generally does everything himself, but sends a signal to the person - you, they say, do not worry, it's all you did, it was your decision

. What do you think, how much energy consumes the brain? 10 Watt. I do not even know if these bulbs. Probably, in the refrigerator. The best brains in the best of his creative moments consume, say, 30 watts. Supercomputers are needed Megawatts, these powerful supercomputers consume energy, which is needed for the electrification of a small city. This suggests that the brain operates in some completely different way than the computer.

It pushes us to the thought that, if we have learned yet how it works, it would affect all areas of our lives, including even energy - could use less energy
. Last year, the world caught up computer performance with a human brain. You understand what evolution has done a long way to the brain? Neanderthals after some time turned to Kant, Einstein, Goethe, and further down the list. During the existence of geniuses we pay a huge price. Nervous and mental disorders come in first place in the world among the diseases that they begin to outstrip by the number of oncology and cardiovascular disease, which is not only a general horror and a nightmare, but, among other things, a very large dynamic burden for all developed countries.

We want everyone to be normal. But the norm - it's not only that rests on the pathology, but that rests on other pathologies on the opposite side - the genius. Because genius - not the norm. And, as a rule, these people dearly pay for his genius. Of these, a large percentage of people who either drink too much, or with a commit, or schizophrenia, or something they certainly have. And it's a huge statistic. This is not a grandmother talk, really well.

What is the difference between the brain and the computer?

We are born with a powerful computer in your head. But it is necessary to install the program. Some programs are already in it, and some need to download, and you shake your whole life, until he dies. He shakes it all the time, you change all the time, rebuilt. During those moments, we are now told, the brain is all of us, me too, of course, already reconstructed. The main work of the brain - to learn. Not in the narrow sense of the banal - like to know who Dreiser or Vivaldi, and in the broadest: it absorbs the information all the time

. In our more than one hundred billion neurons. In different books different figures are given, and how to count them seriously. Each of neurons depending on the type, may be 50 to thousands of links to other parts of the brain. If anyone knows how to count and count, he will receive a quadrillion. The brain - is not just a neural network, a network of networks, network network network. In the brain, 5, 5 petabytes of data - that's three million hours of video viewing. Three hundred years of uninterrupted viewing!

This is an answer to a question we do not overload the brain, if we consume the "extra" information. We can override it, but not the "extra" information. To begin with, what is the information for the brain itself? Not only does this knowledge. He's busy movements, busy moving potassium and calcium across the cell membrane, how the kidneys work, which makes the throat, in the composition of the blood.
We know, of course, that in the brain there are function blocks that have some kind of localization functions. And we think of as fools, that if we make the language work in the brain are activated zones that are occupied speech. So there will not be. That is, they will be involved, but the other parts of the brain will also be taking part in it. Attention and memory at that moment will work. If the job is visual, it means that the visual cortex will also work if the auditory - the auditory. Associative processes too, will always work. In short, during the execution of a task in the brain is not activated any particular section - the whole brain is always working. That is, areas that for something responsible, like to eat, and at the same time as if they do not have.

Our brain is organized differently memory than the computer - it is organized semantically. That is to say, information about the dog does not lie in the place where our memory of the collected animals. For example, a dog yesterday overturned a cup of coffee on my yellow skirt - and for all I have a dog of this breed to be associated yellow skirt. If I am in any plain text I will write that such a dog I have been associated with a yellow skirt, I was diagnosed with dementia. Because on earth rules the dog must be around other dogs and skirt -. Near blouse

And the rules of the divine, that is, the brain, the memories in the brain lie where they want. In order for you computer find anything, you have to specify the address: this folder is a file-so, but in the file type keywords. The brain also needs the address, but it indicates a very different way.

The majority of our brain processes are parallel, while computers have modules and work serially. We just think that the computer is running multiple jobs at once. In fact, he's just very quickly jumping from task to the task.

Short-term memory, we are not organized like in a computer. The computer has a "hardware" and "software", as in the brain hardware and software are inseparable, it is some kind of a mixture. You can, of course, decide that the hardware of the brain - it's genetics. But those programs that our brain shakes and sets a lifetime, after a while become iron. So, what you have learned, it begins to affect the genes.

The brain does not live as Professor Dowell's head on a plate. He has a body - ears, hands, feet, skin, because he remembers the taste of lipstick, remember, which means "scratched heel." The body is just a part of it. This computer does not have a body.

As virtual reality alters brain

If we sit all the time on the Internet, it appears that the disease is recognized in the world, namely, computer addiction. She treated the same specialists who treat drug addiction and alcoholism, and generally different mania. And it's true, a real relationship, not just pugalka. One of the problems arising in computer addiction - deprivation of social interaction. Such people have not developed what is now considered to be one of the last (and the elusive) human privileges in comparison with all other countries in the world, namely the ability to build a model of the psyche of another person.

In Russian there is no good term for this action, in English it is called theory of mind, which is often an idiot translated as "theory of mind" and nothing to do with it does not. But in fact, it means the ability to look at the situation not with my own eyes (brain), and the eyes of another person. This is the basis of communication, the basis of education, the foundation of empathy, empathy, etc. This is a setting that appears when the person teaching it. This is an extremely important thing. Those people who have this setting is completely absent - with autism and patients with schizophrenia

. Sergey Yenikolopov, a great expert on aggression, says nothing can replace a friendly slap. He is quite right. Computer conquered, it can be turned off. When people are all "pereubival" on the Internet, I thought that it is necessary to eat a hamburger, shut down the computer. Including - and they live there running around again. These people are deprived of social interaction skills, they do not fall in love, they do not know how to do it. And all the trouble going on with them.
Computer - this store external information. And when there were external media, the beginning of human culture. So far, arguments are: biological evolution is over or not. And, by the way, is a matter of something serious. Geneticists say over, because everything else that we developed - this is the culture. My objection is to geneticists: "How do you know, if not a secret?" We live on a planet much? So, even if we forget about the culture in general, the modern humans lived 200,000 years. Ants, for example, live 200 million years, compared with our two thousand years 200 - a millisecond. And when our culture begin? Well, 30 thousand years ago, I agreed even 50, 150 million, even though it was not. This is generally a moment. Let's live for at least another million years, then we'll see.

Storage information is becoming more and more complex: all these clouds, which hang our data, video library, Cinematheque, libraries, museums are growing every second. What to do about it, no one knows, because this information can not be recycled. Number of articles associated with the brain, more than 10 million - they simply can not be read. Every day about ten leaves. Well, what do I do with it now? Access to these stores is becoming more difficult and expensive. Access - this is not a library card to the library, and the education that a person is given, and an idea of ​​how to get this information and what to do with it

. And education is becoming longer and more expensive. No matter who pays: the student himself or the State, or sponsor - is not the point. This objective is very expensive. So we avoid contact with the virtual environment can no longer. We find ourselves in a world that not only consists entirely of information - a liquid world. This is not just a metaphor, in the course of the term fluid world. The liquid because one person can be represented in ten persons in ten nickname while we do not know where he is. Moreover, we do not want to know. What is the difference, in the Himalayas, he is sitting at the moment in Peru, or in the next room, or anywhere else, he is not sitting, and a simulation?



We were in a world that has become an object of unknown unknown who he is inhabited if all living people whether or not it

. We see how well that we have the opportunity of distance learning - this is access to everything in the world! That's just such training requires a very careful selection of what to take and what not to take. Here's the story: I recently bought an avocado, guacamole sauce is going to do, and I forgot how to do it. What should be put there? Can it be a fork, for example, be sure to mash or blender? Of course, I climb into the "Google", half a second - get the answer. It is clear that this information is unimportant. If I will be interested to know which grammar was the Sumerians, the last place where I climb will be "Wikipedia". So, I need to know where to look. It was then that we are faced with the question, unpleasant, but important: how digital technologies are changing ourselves

? What's the problem, "gugleniya" and online education?

Any training stimulates our brain. Even idiotic. The word "training" I do not mean sitting in class and reading textbooks, I mean, any work that is done by the brain and that it is difficult, given the brain. Art is transmitted from master to disciple, from person to person. You can not learn cooking by the book - will not work. To do this, you need to stand by and watch how and what the other is doing.

I have a wonderful experience. I was visiting a friend, and his mother made cakes that are eaten only in heaven. I do not understand how this could bake. I said to her: "Dictate to me, please, recipe" that does not mean my mind. She dictated to me, I am all recorded, performed exactly ... and threw everything in the trash! There was impossible.

The taste for reading complex, interesting literature is impossible to instill remotely. Man goes to learn the art of a particular master in order to take the intellectual needle and drive to get. There are many factors that electrons do not pass. Even if these electrons are transferred in the format video lectures, not all equal. Please, let the man get 500 billion is distance learning.

But I want a hundred of them received the usual education, traditional. I was told the other day decided that the children will soon be all to write by hand, but will only print on the computer. Letter - fine motor skills do not just hand it motility right place, which, in particular, is associated with speech and self-organization

. There are some rules that relate to cognitive and creative thinking. One of them - the need to remove the cognitive control: stop look and be afraid of bugs, do not look like they do the neighbors, to cease to reproach myself, "Maybe I do can not do, in principle, can not do, do not even start, I was not prepared ". Let the ideas flow, as the flow. They themselves pritekut wherever necessary. The brain should not be busy computing work as a calculator.

In some firms that can afford it (I know that there are in Japan), a work of blazing hire a person of absolute hippie behavior. It is in everybody's way, hates everyone gets the money for anything, it does not come in a suit, as expected, and some torn jeans. He sits down, which is not necessary, all the overthrows, he smokes, where no one is allowed, and it is allowed, is the most powerful negative reaction.

And then suddenly he said: "You know, it must be here, and it is here, and it is here»
. The result - a profit of 5 billion.