As I watch my mother-in-law lose her cognitive capabilities as an aged victim of a form of dementia, I can't help but be concerned about my own mental capacity. Am I living a life that will promote mental sharpness in my later years, should I live so long? Apart from eating well and exercising, what other habits should we practice, or toxic behaviors we should avoid? I was magnetically drawn to this title.

As a librarian, I spend perhaps too much time online, whether engaged in email or research. Sure, I obviously read actual books, a great deal of them. But even my writing is done on a computer, and rarely with pen and paper anymore. Might all this computer use have a detrimental effect on cognition, memory, creativity, and emotional well being? It seems that it might depend on how you define harm. If nurturing a short attention span and lack of deep thought through skimming over a factoid, image based, distractable environment of superficiality and amusement for many hours daily, writing or reading nothing more complex than a tweet, Facebook post, or brief email; if this is concerning to you, then yes, we may in fact have evidence for worry. The brain's wonderful plasticity, its ability to conform to whatever tools we develop, is evolving our circuitry in response to extended time spent on smart phones and the web. Since those tools present the world in byte-sized pieces of linked up, highly stimulating and distracting content, we are adjusting our neurons daily to this mode of input and thought.

Our brains have evolved with a strong social instinct, both a need to affiliate with others, sort of to find our tribe, and a set of processes for inferring what those we interact with might be thinking and feeling. We tend to anthropomorphize objects, giving them human characteristics (ie. I know my dog is communicating his love for me with those eyes! He understands me!) In fact, humans tend to "neural mirror", or adopt the thoughts and feelings of those we interact with. Such empathic behavior can become dangerous in a setting like Facebook, when fed thoughts from bots intended to manipulate your political behavior, for example.

Recent studies in human-computer interaction in problem solving tasks found that the more user-friendly the assistance provided, the less we worked to mentally figure out a task, and solve a puzzle. Less user-friendly computer assistance forced human subjects to mentally work at solution, taking on more of the mental task. It seems we work to the lowest necessary level when cognitive tasks are shared with a computer. The popular thought that we can store our extended memory in the web, and save our brain power for higher tasks proves to be inaccurate. When we don't use our brain power, when we simplify certain mental tasks, those capabilities go away, trimmed out of our brains as unnecessary. Those tasks we perform, and perform more frequently, the brain retains those needed neural pathways.

Additionally, when time is spent with technology, time is not spent with other pursuits. Research has shown that time in nature leads to "greater attentiveness, stronger memory, and generally improved cognition. Our brains become both calmer and sharper." By allowing our brains a break from electronic stimuli, and to relax, memories can be processed, contemplativeness assists our brains to integrate experience, make unique connections, improve control and creativity. So as our brains adapt to technology by making us capable of multitasking, flitting about skimming information, we are likely to lose the capability to focus attention and complete lengthy, complex tasks. Meditative thinking will diminish, in favor of "calculative" or quick processing thinking. We tend to construct a world that aligns with the culture of the tools we create, a frenzied, over-stimulated world, lacking in extended, deep, contemplative thought.