Human studies

“Technology is changing our world more than ever before, the catalyst now is the smartphone”- Larry Rosen

In recent years basic human functions and interpersonal communication became increasingly dependent upon mobile telecommunication technologies and the internet. This phenomenon, which has been studied by numerous social and anthropological researchers, has gained little attention from neuroscientists despite the common intuition that the shift from face-to-face interaction into a ‘screen-to-screen’ interaction carries significant changes in behavior and cognition.

One of the biggest challenges in attempting to address this change is understanding how to isolate the influence that a particular telecommunication technology has on our behavior in a reality that is already saturated with such technologies. The recent upsurge in the popularity of smartphones provides us with a radical and unique time window in history in which we can characterize cognitive, emotional and neurobiological changes resulting from extensive smartphone usage.

In the lab we employ a wide arsenal of personality evaluations and batteries of cognitive tests and measures of independent and task-related brain activity, using EEG-ERP and EEG-TMS measurements of cortical inhibition, to answer questions such as:

• Does heavy usage of smartphones depletes our attentional capacities?
• Do the neurobiological correlates of behavioral inhibition differ between heavy smartphone users and non-users?
• Is there a relationship between the frequency and duration of Apps usage and the extent of smartphone-induced behavioral and neurobiological changes?
• Is there evidence for prefrontal neuroplasticity in the brain of non-users following extensive usage of smartphones?

 

EEG-dTMS during cognitive task