互联网正在改变我们大脑的结构和功能

From gathering food to finding a mate and communicating with other members of society, many of the most basic human activities are now being carried out in the virtual realm. It should come as little surprise, then, that the multitude of brain regions involved in coordinating these everyday tasks are becoming adapted to this ultra-modern mode of living. Yet with research into the impact of the internet on brain function still in its infancy, an international team of researchers has compiled a review of everything we have learned so far about how digital life is altering our minds.
从获取食物到寻找伴侣，再到与社会其他成员交流，现在许多最基本的活动都在虚拟世界中进行。因此，参与协调这些日常事务的大量大脑区域正在适应这种超现代的生活方式，这应该不足为奇。虽然关于互联网对大脑功能影响的研究仍处于起步阶段，一个国际研究团队对迄今为止我们所了解到的所有有关数字生活如何改变我们思维的研究进行了综述。
Appearing in the journal World Psychiatry and authored by scientists from Oxford University, Harvard University, Western Sydney University, Kings College, and Manchester University, the review examines findings from a number of brain-imaging studies in order to assess some of the leading hypotheses regarding how the internet may affect our brains. Though the findings are not intended to be taken as conclusive, evidence suggests that our online lifestyles are altering brain regions associated with attention, memory, and social skills.
该综述发表在《世界精神病学》杂志上，由牛津大学、哈佛大学、西悉尼大学、国王学院和曼彻斯特大学的科学家共同撰写。其核查了诸多关于脑成像的研究，以得到互联网如何影响我们的大脑的一些主要假设。尽管这一研究结果并不是结论性的，但有证据表明，我们的网络生活方式正在改变大脑中与注意力、记忆力和社交技能相关的区域。
For example, one key study found that people who compulsively check their phones for messages and other notifications have reduced grey matter in certain areas of the prefrontal cortex that are associated with maintaining focus in the face of distractions. As a consequence, these individuals tended to perform worse on tasks designed to measure attention.
例如，一项重要的研究发现，强迫查看手机信息和其他通知的人，前额叶皮质某些区域的灰质有所减少，这些区域与面对干扰时保持注意力有关。因此，这些人往往在需要注意力的任务中表现得更差。
The impact of search engines has also led to speculation that we may begin to rely too heavily on the internet as a source of information, to the detriment of our own internal memory capacity. In support of this hypothesis, the authors point to a study which found that people tend to exhibit poorer recall of information found online as opposed to in an encyclopedia. Brain scans showed that this effect was correlated with reduced activation of the brain’s ventral stream – a key memory retrieval system – when gathering information online.
搜索引擎的影响也引来了质疑，即我们可能开始过度依赖互联网作为信息来源，而损害了我们自己内部的存储能力。为了支持这一假设，作者指出，一项研究发现，与百科全书相比，人们对在线信息的记忆力往往较差。脑部扫描显示，这种影响与在线收集信息时大脑腹侧流（一种关键的记忆检索系统）的激活程度下降有关。
Such a finding raises the possibility that online learning may fail to sufficiently activate key brain regions required for long-term memory storage.
这一结果提高了一种可能性，即在线学习可能无法充分激活长期记忆存储所需的关键大脑区域。
Social media networks also appear to be transforming the ways in which our brains’ social centers work. For instance, one study found that the number of Facebook friends a person has determined the volume of grey matter in the right entorhinal cortex, which has previously been associated with the ability to associate names and faces.
社交媒体网络似乎也在改变我们大脑社交中心的运作方式。例如，一项研究发现，一个人在Facebook上的好友数量决定了他右内嗅皮层中灰质的含量，该部分曾与人的名字和面孔的关联能力有关。
This effect is likely to be caused by the fact that social media encourages people to maintain large numbers of weak social connections, requiring an increased ability to put names to faces. Prior to the advent of social media, people tended to have deeper relationships with a smaller network of people, and therefore required different adaptations within the brain’s social regions.
这种影响很可能是由于社交媒体鼓励人们保持大量的社会弱联系，这就要求人们有更强的联系名字和面孔的能力。在社交媒体出现之前，人们倾向于与更小范围的人际网络建立更深层次的关系，因此需要在大脑的社交区域内有不同的适应方式。
Overall, the information is neither detailed nor conclusive enough to make a definitive statement regarding whether the internet is good or bad for our brains. What’s clear, however, is that the more time we spend online, the more we alter our cognitive function.
总的来说，以上这些内容既不够详细，也不够具有结论性，无法对互联网对我们的大脑好坏与否得出明确的结论。但很显然，我们花在网上的时间越多，我们的认知功能就会改变得越多。