Sex, Drugs, and Firing Neurons: This Is Your Brain on Cognition November 25, 2009

Favorite:

Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/10/04/Baroness_Susan_Greenfield_Is_Online_Networking_Harmful

Neuroscientist Susan Greenfield describes the brain's cognitive processes for interpreting and learning from new sensations. Greenfield claims thrill-seeking -- "sex, drugs, and rock and roll" -- undermines these processes, recreating the sense of new experiences. "You never say, 'Oh, I'm going to have a really cognitive time tonight.'"

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With a recent study showing that up to 97% of Australians aged 16-17 use at least one social networking site, should we be worried? Increasingly children are raised in front of television and computer screens. What are the effects that this can have on brain development? Do websites like Twitter and Facebook contribute to a culture of short term attentiveness?

Baroness Susan Greenfield is a neuroscientist at Oxford University and argues that we should be increasingly wary of how the changing technological environment is affecting the minds of the young. - Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Baroness Susan Greenfield is a British scientist, writer, broadcaster, and member of the House of Lords. Greenfield, whose specialty is the physiology of the brain, has worked to research and bring attention to Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease.

Greenfield is Professor of Synaptic Pharmacology at Lincoln College, Oxford, and Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain. On February 1, 2006, she was installed as Chancellor of Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh.