New technologies will hurt people's memory?

The class of students of the previous generation in the past ten years often have the habit of mentally calculating basic calculations, not only when doing exercises in class, but also applying to everyday life such as those when buying and selling.

Partly because there were no portable computers at the time, but mostly in the old days, students were trained for mental math. Today's students, every time they do math, they pull out the computer to 'press' , even the girls sell vegetables in the market and charge them by computer.

That's why the scientific community has questioned whether new technology can hurt our memory?

The famous French Sciences et Avenir magazine conducted an interview with Francis Eustache Psychiatrist, director of Inserm's research unit at the University of Caen Normandy and chairman of the Scientific Council of Observatoire magazine. to understand the problem.

Our 'internal memory' will be weakened because of these 'external memory' like this.

Today, 'forget' has become a common affair. Forgetting the address, forgetting someone's phone number . is just a matter of fact. But meeting someone you know, remembering your face and forgetting your name or remembering your name and forgetting your face is 'dangerous'.

The word 'memory' , or memory, takes the Latin word 'memoria' meaning 'memorization' , witty by Sciences et Avenir, for example, that it has "slipped out of our hands today" for which is the almost permanent use of new technologies, and especially since the Internet was born.

Doctor Francis Eustache said, a study by TS. Betsy Sparrow, a professor of Psychology at Columbia University (USA) has made it very clear that when asking questions a bit difficult for students, such as "Where is the Yellow River?" , the first thing they think about is finding answers on the Internet rather than finding in their own memories.

The Internet has thus become an essential form of 'external memory', where information is stored outside of us. And that's a big change to our cognitive function and our brain.

The power of technology helps circulate knowledge and gives us a lot of information right away. But, like any technical development, it has its downside as it poses a problem more generally, almost philosophically, about the relationship between internal memories and external memories. .

Internal memory features aggregate what is known (semantic memory), what has been remembered (multiple memory), what has been mastered (method memory), which is their memory me.

But the internal memory is always connected to the external memory (where we know it can be found) like other people, in libraries, in newspapers, at universities and today is the Internet.

Another problem is that 'external memory' has a rich and easily accessible source of information while our brains are limited. So, why remember the information for the brain when we know that it has been stored somewhere online?

There is also the question that it is true that we have too little effort to remember (including phone numbers), but is this serious or not?

It will not be serious if we have a reliable directory, but the problem is that if the internal memory weakens, the knowledge of the world will weaken while it helps us think and decide everything. thing.

Too many offers (announcements, messages, emails, news .) are also not beneficial, will cause us to respond not to focus on the main problem and the brain can not rest. Therefore, the internal memory / external memory relationship needs to be balanced.

Regarding the use of GPS, according to a brain imaging study, it is known that London taxi drivers, who have to know all the roads in the city, have hippocampus (brain structures related to recording). remember and orient in space) develop more than ordinary people. But if this area is rarely used then it will be weakened.

Doctor Francis Eustache concludes, if we say that our memory is being threatened by new technologies, this is exactly what most of us think, although scientific research results are needed to prove it.

The only thing we can say today is to well develop the cognitive functions of young people, the use of new technologies must be extremely limited . And it's important to know how to regulate the disconnection time to preserve memory.