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The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limits of Working Memory [NOOK Book]
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As the technological environment speeds up to a maddening degree, Klingberg, a professor of developmental cognitive neuroscience at Sweden's Karolinska Institute, warns that the huge burden of information overload and multitasking can exceed the limits of our slowly evolving "stone-age" brain. Using data showing the subtle increase in IQ scores during the last century and its link to educational improvements, Klingberg notes a gap between the rapidity of electronic high-tech devices and the brain's relatively slower capacity to process information, leading to memory malfunctions. The text can be somewhat academic, but the amount of scientific fact translated to something the reader can use is still sizable, including keen writing on the impact on working memory of problem solving, meditation, computer games, caffeine and the existence of attention deficit disorder. Klingberg also reviews the evidence that mental "exercise" can increase the capacity of working memory. A highly sane look at the increasingly insane demands of the information age, this book discusses with precision a subject worthy of attention. B&w illus. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.1 Introduction: The Stone Age Brain Meets the Information Flood 3
2 The Information Portal 19
3 The Mental Workbench 33
4 Models of Working Memory 45
5 The Brain and the Magical Number Seven 55
6 Simultaneous Capacity and Mental Bandwidth 69
7 Wallace's Paradox 83
8 Brain Plasticity 93
9 Does ADHD Exist? 103
10 A Cognitive Gym 115
11 The Everyday Exercising of Our Mental Muscles 125
12 Computer Games 137
13 The Flynn Effect 147
14 Neurocognitive Enhancement 157
15 The Information Flood and Flow 163
Notes and References 171
Index 197
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Overview
As the pace of technological change accelerates, we are increasingly experiencing a state of information overload. Statistics show that we are interrupted every three minutes during the course of the work day. Multitasking between email, cell-phone, text messages, and four or five websites while listening to an iPod forces the brain to process more and more informaton at greater and greater speeds. And yet the human brain has hardly changed in the last 40,000 years.Are all these high-tech advances overtaxing our Stone Age brains or is the constant flood of information good for us, giving our brains the daily exercise they seem to crave? In The ...