Google is changing your brain and don't you forget it

A new study confirms it: Google (GOOG) is altering your brain.More precisely, our growing dependence on the Internet has changedhow -- and what -- our brains choose to remember.

When we know where to find information, we're less likely toremember it -- an amnesia dubbed The Google Effect by a team led bypsychologist Betsy Sparrow of Columbia University.

Goodbye, soul-searching; hello, facts-at-fingertips.

The finding, published in Friday's issue of the journal Science,doesn't prove that Google, Yahoo (YHOO) or other search engines aremaking us dumber, as some have asserted. We're still capable ofremembering things that matter -- and are not easily found online,Sparrow said.

Rather, it suggests that the human memory is reorganizing whereit goes for information, adapting to new computing technologiesrather than relying purely on rote memory. We're outsourcing"search" from our brains to our computers.

"We're not thoughtless empty-headed people who don't havememories anymore," Sparrow said. "But we are becoming particularlyadept at remembering where to go find things. And that's kind ofamazing."

In a series of four experiments at Columbia and Harvard, Sparrowand her team found that students are more likely to recall a trivialfact if they think it will be erased from the computer -- and forgetit if they're assured it will be there.

Similarly, the team proved that people are better at rememberingwhere to find facts, rather than the facts themselves. The students,they found, recalled the names of files where information wasstored, rather than the information itself.

This creates a mental dependency on instant access toinformation, the team noted.

No wonder the loss of our Internet connection feels like losing afriend, they wrote. Once we become reliant on a huge reservoir ofinformation, it feels uneasy to be away from it, she said.

"We must remain plugged in to know what Google knows," the paperconcludes.

But in many ways, this is no different from humans' age-oldreliance on the "group memories" shared by friends, families andtribes, noted Sparrow and her colleagues at the University ofWisconsin and Harvard University.

We may not recall our aunt's birthday, the name of a high schoolteacher or who gave us that nice bottle of wine -- but someone weknow does.

"We all have these people in our lives who know certain things.And we dip into what they know, when we need it," said Sparrow. "Weallow them to be responsible for it."

"I really think we are using the Internet the way we used to usepeople," she said.

While Google said it could not comment on the premise of thepaper, spokesman Gabriel Stricker said, "Search is how Google began,and we're constantly working to improve it. Search can always getbetter and faster at helping you find what you want, when you wantit, where you want it."

Proving that the Internet is merely an expanded network ofpeople, New York University professor Clay Shirky, author of thebook "Cognitive Surplus," has done the math: The articles, edits,and arguments on Wikipedia represent about 100 million hours ofhuman labor, he calculated. That's more than 11,400 years.

If we quit remembering, "the Internet would grind to a halt,"Sparrow said. "Nobody would be feeding anything into it."

There are losses -- unlike their great-grandparents, few oftoday's children can recite poems like "The Rime of The AncientMariner." Perhaps this is a skill that, when not practiced, turnsrusty.

Sparrow disagrees with Nicholas Carr, whose alarming 2008 article"Is Google Making Us Stupid?" explains what he sees as the brain-corrosive side effects of digital devices.

It doesn't prove that we're incapable of thinking long and hardabout anything, she said. "And it could be that once we stopworrying about memorizing dates and facts and names, we're betterable to concentrate."

In fact, a wired life may actually open up more creative thingsto do with our brain, the team said. Psychologists have long knownthat it is easier to grasp an abstract concept when the brain is notfixated on memorizing facts.

"Why remember something if I know I can look it up again? In somesense, with Google and other search engines, we can offload some ofour memory demands onto machines," Roddy Roediger, a psychologist atWashington University, told Science in an accompanying article.

Sparrow became interested in the topic one night at home, whilewatching the 1944 mystery-thriller "Gaslight." She knew sherecognized the maid -- but couldn't remember her name.

"Before the Internet, I'd trace it back in my mind "... thinking'Where else did I see her? Was it in black and white, or color? WasI with friends, or not? What book might know?' Anything to find aclue," she said.

Instead, she went online and in seconds had an answer: An 18-year-old Angela Lansbury.

"I turned to my husband and said 'What did we do before theInternet?' "

Contact Lisa M. Krieger at 408-920-5565.