Summary Of The Shallows By Nicholas Carr

Meet the Internet, the Most Profound Mood Altering Drug Yet

What if the internet came with a warning label which read: ‘Caution: frequent use may cause cognitive decline, depression and addiction’, would you still use it? Consider that the internet has replaced caffeine as our most commonly used mood altering substance, and it’s an addictive one too. The idea that our brain can be reshaped by the internet was first thoroughly explored by Pulitzer prize finalist author, Nicholas Carr in his thought provoking book, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. Drawing on his theories, this essay expands on Carr’s hypothesis to explain that not only is the the internet effecting our cognition, but that it is also encouraging the development

The regions of our brain impacted by our internet use are also associated with our emotions. Carr writes, “now it is true that the areas of our brain are associated with different mental structures, but they do not play ‘rigid roles’”(29). Indeed, this is true. The areas of our brain responsible for our cognitive function are also responsible for our moods. Central to his argument is that all of this is possible because of neuroplasticity or the ability for new neurological connections to be formed or lost throughout our lives. Prior to this discovery, scientists believed that our brains developed during childhood and that the neurological connections formed were static throughout our lives. Research has shown that this is not true, our brains can change although plasticity decreases once we reach

A group of researchers and psychiatrists from the University of Pisa in Italy write in the European Journal of Pharmacology that “depressed individuals show decreased cognitive performance and although most studies focus on cognitive performance after the development of depression, recent research has shown that even after the remittance of depression, cognitive performance does not improve” (Marazitti et al 83-86). These findings, along with numerous other studies show that cognitive performance is connected to depression, although Marazziti and her team are quick to note they were unable to answer many of the questions surrounding the connection between depression and cognitive decline (83-86). However, new findings from a group of neuroscience researchers at the University of Bari in Italy, using modern “neuroimaging techniques have allowed a better definition of this relation. Depression and cognitive dysfunction share a common neuropathological platform in cortical and sub-cortical brain areas implicated in emotional and cognitive processing which may be under the control of genetic and environmental factors (Papazacharias and Nardini 179-182). Just as the modern theory of depression highlights the importance of the structure of our brain, Papazacharias and Nardini show in their research there is structural connection between our emotions and our cognition. This goes to show that cognitive decline is