Not A Generational Gap But a Brain Gap?

Is technology creating a "Brain Gap"? Here is an interesting interview on the show future tense where Gary Small M.D. from UCLA argues that "digital natives" brains, the younger generation which grew up with technology, may be wired differently. To support this claim he conducted various brain scans and saw their brains light up differently than the "digital immigrants", the older generation who did not grow up with all of this technology, as they conducted an Internet search.

I asked our very own Dr Smith, and he was a little skeptical, because he sees evolution as a very slow process. Dr. Smith argues for this study to be valid it has to be conducted across a few generations. Also he pointed out that the differences could be explained by how memory is formed and/or accessed (I am not sure which because I stopped paying attention to what he was saying).

A few points that caught my attention in the interview were the rise in Attention Deficit Disorder (which I may be suffering) and Social Isolation.