Surf the Web, Get Smarter

Filed in archive Announcements on October 16, 2008

I'll admit, sometimes I feel guilty when I've spent too much time surfing around on the Internet. Who knew it was actually GOOD for you?

A survey to appear in next month's American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry is the first to assess how performing Internet searches influences brain activity in older Americans. Research was done on volunteers aged 55-76. All were healthy, and half had already had experience with Internet searches.

Each subject was asked to "perform Web searches and book-reading tasks while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans." During the Internet search, researchers noticed that only "those who had previous Web-search experience registered extensive activity in decision-making and complex-reasoning portions of the brain."

The scientist conducting the experiment expected that over time, the "inexperienced Internet searchers" would benefit in the same way their already experienced counterparts did.

This means, surf often! It's good for us.