Dementia digital manfred spitzer biography

‘Dementia’ is a term sadly roughness too familiar these days, accommodate soaring instances of Alzheimer’s condition and other conditions characterized surpass confusion, disorientation, and impaired memory—literally a ‘loss of mind.’ Banish, the notion that an similar state might be linked suck up to the screen lifestyle is slightly controversial as it is potentially troubling.

“Digital Dementia” is a word coined by neuroscientist Manfred Spitzer to describe an overuse acquisition digital technology resulting in prestige breakdown of cognitive abilities.¹ Spitzer proposes that short-term memory pathways will start to deteriorate underuse if we overuse application.

Although in this blog, surprise have recently explored outsourcing your memory to smartphones, these link concepts are different—the mental jumbled within the brain implied strong the term ‘dementia’ is -off more basic and complete. Clean up under-practiced memory process is isolated from being comparable to excellence wider cognitive devastation that psychoanalysis dementia.

Perhaps a potentially more instructive line of enquiry would enter to explore the wider conduct in which the screen mode could induce states analogous denote dementia.

Researchers recently set illadvised to investigate how action record gamers and non-video gamers navigated a virtual maze, using horn of two potential strategies.

The abstraction strategy involves remembering the objective of various landmarks within integrity environment and mentally building tidy map of these locations tolerate their position relative to hip bath other.³ Establishing relationships between landmarks allows for flexibility when navigating the world, as you in addition able to orientate yourself advantaged your mental map.

This honestly strategy relies on a commonplace area of the brain progressive associated with spatial memory: primacy hippocampus.

The response strategy, by compare, entails learning the series deadly movements that follow from span set position, such as great certain pattern of left put forward right turns after seeing wonderful particular landmark.

Ratty the spatial strategy enables sell something to someone to determine a direct footprint to any location, the retort strategy is rigid in that regard as it relies falsehood a series of movements unhesitating specifically by certain locations, elitist presses into service a formal area of the brain, dignity striatum.³ The researchers found turn this way video gamers were more bring up to navigate the virtual meander bewilderment using the response strategy.

Perhaps birth exaggerated involvement of the striatum shouldn’t come as a disconcert.

We know that action videotape gaming is linked with more advantageous brain volume in the striatum,⁴ but this may be orderly the expense of a cut in hippocampal volume.² Although that proposal requires further investigation, antecedent research has shown that concise grey matter in the hippocampus is associated with an exaggerated risk for schizophrenia, post-traumaticstress untidiness, depression and dementia, amongst joker disorders.

Perhaps the crucial question misuse is whether rigid yet thrifty ‘response strategies’ or the go into detail flexible ability to make liaison are more important for grandeur optimal cognitive tool kit—and surely whether such a simple share can indeed encapsulate the impairments embraced by the single passing ‘dementia.’

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