Posted 06/12/09 at 05:32:23 PM by Andy Salisbury

According to a recent study, surfing the net makes us much smarter, rather than rotting our brains. For folks like us, this just happens to be some great news.

The study, which was conducted by Gary Small of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at the University of California at Los Angeles, took a poll of 24 participants. Half of the participants used the Internet on a daily basis while the other half had little to no experience. Using an MRI, Small compared brain activity as they read a book off of a computer screen, and both groups produced similar results. But, when he looked at the groups as they searched for clues about the benefits of eating chocolate and the best way to visit the Galápagos, the group that surfed the internet regularly registered twice as much activity in the frontal, temporal and cingulated areas of the brain – all of which supply aid to complex reasoning skills.

“The simple headline here is that Google is making us smarter,” stated Small. And for this revelation, we thank you. Perhaps surfing Facebook and I Can Has Cheezeburger all day long won’t seem so silly now!

Read More