"We train our brain by the things we do. For example, experienced taxicab drivers have an abnormally large hippocampus, the portion of the brain responsible for navigation. Veteran violinists or keyboardists have an expanded motor cortex, the area of the brain associated with fine motor skills. Our brain is literally shaped by what we repeatedly do.
The website Lumosity.com claims to be able to harness the power of neuroplasticity — the notion that the brain is malleable and changes in response to repeated activities — to improve its members’ cognitive skills.
However, the Internet may drain the brain as well as train it. Scientists have hypothesized that the habit of surfing the web, hopping from page to page without alighting on anything for more than a moment, actually impairs our neurological ability to concentrate. A similar worry is that we’re shrinking our attention span by constantly monitoring the texts, Tweets, and emails incessantly streaming into our smartphones, tablets, or computers.
Fixing our attention on what’s truly valuable noticeably improves our capacity to function...Meanwhile, the inability to focus causes our talent and ability to atrophy."
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excerpt from John Maxwell's Leadership Wired Blog
