Your Brain on Tech

[00:07] Technology isn't just changing our lives. Not just how they think, It's been shown that playing certain video games for hours

[00:21] your ability to navigate space well, certain parts of it-- bigger. can change our brains in ways that improve our ability

[00:37] To find out, we've built a giant maze outside the world of computers. I'm the lab rat.

[00:58] [theme music playing]

[01:10] Our brains have been profoundly transformed A lot of the information that I used to have to store in my brain is now stored in my phone.

[01:23] In many ways, I've delegated to this new external organ. for other things that matter

[01:36] So while we all don't have implants in our brains yet, which is why you may find it deeply disturbing

[01:49] to see me do something like this. [music playing]

[02:01] by having enriching experiences, To learn more about this, in the field of learning and memory.

[02:15] - What about them? - So the lab is trying to figure out how memory works, how it works in the brain. that we know is important to memory is

[02:29] So what does the hippocampus do? and, really, a certain kind of memory. when you need to rapidly form new arbitrary associations.

[02:44] definitely needs the hippocampus. and we need to be able to remember "I parked my car in this exact spot in the lot."

[02:57] that's what the hippocampus seems to be really be bubblegum on the book, is that a hippocampus? Is this the whole thing or is it symmetric...

[03:11] That looks just like this? conducted a study to show They gathered participants

[03:23] and split them up into three groups. any video games for two weeks, an active control group and an experimental group

[03:35] Beforehand, they had all the participants to measure their spatial memory. And what we found was that the people who played the 3D game

[03:48] whereas the control group but we can speculate that there were changes So what are we going to be doing to me here?

[04:03] in our past studies, Uh, the first is we're gonna add some brain scans, We've never actually looked at somebody's brain scans

[04:16] is we're gonna put you through a real-world space. [Michael] This truly untested territory. has never been studied in a physical environment

[04:32] I will have to navigate my way Will playing video games improve my mental skills If so, society may start looking

[04:47] First, we had to get Welcome to the MRI Center. to then see what's gonna be happening to your brain

[05:01] Changes in the size and shape of your hippocampus and also changes in the connectivity between brain regions. with a special emphasis

[05:14] [music playing] is a standard memory test that we do. [Michael] This test began by showing me

[05:26] I did my best to commit every one of them to memory. What we're gonna do now though, is we're gonna test And this is actually where it starts to tap

[05:41] [Michael] This time, I had to view another series of objects The catch, some of the items were very similar

[05:55] This tested my memory for details [Michael] Next up, a virtual version of a water maze [Dane] The idea is that you are trying to locate

[06:11] I'm so glad I'm not a lab rat. I had to find the same invisible underwater platform using only the shapes of the mountains as my guide,

[06:27] Hey. [Craig] These are the sorts of tasks that we've been able to do after you've done the video games.

[06:39] But we also have a really great opportunity here now and actually get it into the real world. No. We don't get to do this kind of thing.

[06:52] [music playing] [Craig] This is what we brought you here for,

[07:04] You're gonna be a lab rat in a maze. [Michael] So how do you think that'll effect which is that moving around in a 3D environment

[07:18] in a video game can actually physically affect your brain? train your hippocampus to be better at spatial memory in some of these areas.

[07:30] You've got objects embedded inside here, Oh, and build a mental map of whatever's inside there. and learn the objects.

[07:45] [Michael] Because the walls were six feet tall, My task was to create a spatial memory based entirely on the angles and turns of the white walls

[07:59] outside the maze. The entrance is that way. I'm considering this the right side, that the left side.

[08:13] that I feel like exist along the outside edge, [Craig] And time. find out where the objects are.

[08:27] - Okay. - Okay. You ready? - Go. - [Michael] Pump. Okay. hugging the rightmost part of-- pump.

[08:45] Now, I guess I do the opposite to get out. There it is.

[08:57] Item two, the basketball. would evaluate my performance and whether I took the most optimal route each time.

[09:10] [Michael] Here kitty, kitty, kitty. [Michael] Retracing my steps. [Dane] The boot.

[09:24] - Go. - [Michael] Water bottle. Yeah, it was back here.

[09:38] No? Oh, shoot. That's-- no?

[09:50] It was down some sort of... a long corridor like this in this area. [Michael] Until this point, things had gone pretty well,

[10:02] With most of the items now gone, between the various white corridors. Got it.

[10:17] - [Michael] Got it. Nice. - That one was a little tougher, huh? [Dane] Now, we're gonna make it a little bit more difficult. [Craig] Navigating the maze in reverse

[10:32] We're gonna give you a list of four things to get, the bottle, the crayon, I think--

[10:47] That's the ball. but now I remember which alley to go down. Boot. Don't want that.

[11:04] Oh, I just saw the boot, Got it. I'm done. I'm coming back. [Dane] The pump, the pillow,

[11:18] - [Craig] All right. Excellent. - [Dane] All right. Nice job. This experiment could use a control. with daily video game playing,

[11:32] Well, luckily for that, Okay, one of them has too much hair, - You ready? - [all] Ready.

[11:45] My look-alikes had to go through the exact same tests The difference would be that they would play Then any change in my performance

[12:00] [music playing] starting from an ideal baseline, Would ten days of gaming really make a difference?

[12:18] [music playing] - [whirring] - It's also playing with the empathy

[12:34] In fact, in many cases, than we are to people. Roboticist and MIT Media Lab alum,

[12:47] a miniature robot equipped with a camera of unsuspecting pedestrians. what would it be?

[13:01] [Michael] The majority of people [BlabDroid] Tell me something that you've never told I'm scared I won't be able to love

[13:13] and to let myself go in a love relationship. than to a human. I mean, it's often easier to say

[13:27] instead of in real life, isn't it? wasn't a friend or a significant other, A mental healthcare startup called Talkspace

[13:41] to text therapists for advice. should be anonymous, stigma-free, Texting can give users the distance they need

[13:56] And messages can be sent when the user wants, [woman] Talkspace, therapy for how we live today.

[14:08] Better now that my phone is working. Sometimes, however, we aren't looking for technology to comfort us. we're finding ourselves wanting to comfort technology.

[14:24] Cute little fellow, isn't he? Well, why? metal and wires and computer chips.

[14:38] But we spend a lot of time with technology. But the degree to which we empathize with it [music playing]

[14:52] was invaded by bugs-- These bugs are made of plastic, metal, But could certain conditions

[15:05] A 2015 MIT study and a personal backstory which can lead to an emotional connection

[15:19] - Thank you for your help today. - Of course. Pleasure. our subjects think they're focus testing In this case, they're given a lifeless hexbug

[15:34] This thing kind of looks like a bug, It's light. [Michael] Then it was time to test their empathy.

[15:47] is place the item in the middle of that block. And I would like for you to take this mallet Yeah. Really? Okay. This is cool.

[16:02] to smashing this lifeless object. Many of them even seemed to enjoy it. Not really. I felt indifferent to it.

[16:15] [Michael] While these subjects exhibited no empathy look what happened when we gave the exact same bugs I'm gonna place Margaret down here.

[16:30] And you could feel free to pick her up. - She's honestly one of our favorites. - [woman, laughing] Okay. A little erratic right now,

[16:46] [Michael] Notice how the subject has already Maybe she feeds off my energy. Go towards the middle.

[17:00] and maybe when I go like that, That's Aaron. - No way. - Yes.

[17:13] It really depends on who's holding him. Oh, yeah. He's got a lot of energy. [Michael] Now that you've interacted with Eli a bit more,

[17:26] - He doesn't know what's going on. - Hey, Joe. Amy, I'm gonna place Margaret right here,

[17:40] and I'd like you to smash it. I don't wanna hurt it. [music playing]

[17:58] and I'd like for you to smash it. And, Chris... Ugh.

[18:14] Oh, Joe. Joe. [music playing]

[18:27] Now, how did it feel to smash Aaron? It didn't feel good, you know, Even though it's lifeless

[18:41] because when I put it in my hand, - Do you feel bad? - I do. Oh, he's back.

[18:55] Would you smash him again to make sure I mean, he survived it. He survived it once. [Michael] Clearly, it doesn't take much for humans

[19:09] But after my ten days of video-gaming-- I was about to find out if technology had and my physical brain.

[19:24] Exactly, so we're gonna look at the difference between to see do we see any change. the object recognition memory test

[19:37] both of which had been revised with different content Dane and I will analyze all this data and see how you did. [music playing]

[19:54] Tore down the old one, built a new one So it has sort of the same level of difficulty. the same number of turns,

[20:06] to try to have a similar maze, but that's new. Three, two, one, go. As before, I was given five minutes

[20:20] and where all of the objects were. so if I hug the second right wall Was my hippocampus working better?

[20:33] Thirty seconds. all the objects hidden here. [Michael] Then my test began.

[20:45] - Go. - Rubber duck was way over here. Second item is the hat. Go. Top hat.

[20:59] like I did last time, Second right, hug the turn, got it. turns, and straightaways.

[21:13] Oh, wow. It's actually a cool vase. But would this improve my overall performance? So we've gotten all the objects.

[21:25] We're gonna go around to the other side of the maze is the blue seahorse the flashlight, Go.

[21:39] even though I was working from the opposite entrance, which seemed to serve me well. Nice.

[21:52] [Dane] All right. Your next sequence is the blue vase, and the baseball glove. - [Craig] Hit it. That was not as hard as I expected.

[22:05] I was literally thinking, "Oh, okay. The glove's the first one. I didn't even plan that at all. It just kind of happened.

[22:19] Have you been playing video games? would be the control, if any, measured against theirs.

[22:32] [Michael] Finally, my brain was scanned once again Dr. Stark and Dr. Clemenson would analyze the MRI [music playing]

[22:52] Yep. Actually, no, I don't know. I guess let's start off first And it's important to note that in our control test without video-gaming,

[23:08] people did not improve in this task, but... Ten points is actually 20 years' worth Oh, wow.

[23:21] in someone who's getting really old, So the second one we did was the virtual version 30% better the second time you did it.

[23:34] I could tell that I was using better strategies. - We also had the real maze. - [Michael] Yeah. Despite our efforts to try to equate them,

[23:47] If we took a look at things how many errors you made, and we looked So on all of them,

[24:01] and all but one of them made more errors. You didn't get slower from maze one to two. exact number of errors.

[24:15] And even though this experiment the results are consistent with our virtual maze study - [Craig] All right. - Thank you, video games.

[24:29] [Craig] Inside your brain, it's a little tougher to really tell. is going to be small. because then it would have to be pushing something else out.

[24:43] So it's just not going to be a large change. What we saw is there were some regions that appear to have changed shape

[24:57] What's really surprising to me is that as an adult, That makes me wanna take better care of my brain. I'm not just stuck with what I have now, today.

[25:16] is that doing things, something to do, something to figure out, keeping your brain sharp.

[25:30] [Craig] Exactly. [music playing] people are bound to worry about what it will do to our brains.

[25:47] to our machines make us dumber? Will our empathy for machines have negative consequences Well, let's look back to another time

[26:02] to fundamentally change our brains. worried that the wide use of writing He said that writing would, to quote his student, Plato,

[26:19] because people will not use their memories. and not remember themselves." Written language did fundamentally change our brains.

[26:33] modern civilization has accomplished. is that this is not the boundary of my body, and this is not the boundary of my mind.

[26:48] And, as always, thanks for watching. [theme music playing]