I wish I could use “addiction” and its related words in a loosely metaphorical sense, as a way of dramatizing a problem that should look gravely serious in itself. I am afraid, though, that the syndrome I want to describe deserves the label literally—whether it meets the formal criteria for a distinct mental “disorder” handed down by the American Psychiatric Association or not.
If I had any doubts in this respect, they were dispelled in July 2011 when I attended a high-profile international conference on “teaching democracy” in Oslo, Norway. It was an eye-opening experience, for reasons slightly different from those intended by the organizers. On the bus from the airport, a 14-15-year-old boy in the seat in front spent maybe 40 minutes on Facebook—scrolling up and down on his smartphone, typing comments, smiling occasionally, and doing whatever you typically do on Facebook. Once in a while, he would put down the device and try to look out of the window, but in a minute or two would feel an itch to resume his scrolling and ritual touch-screening. It was a vivid reminder that the information revolution was not necessarily enhancing interest in, and perusal of, information related to the larger social world. During the conference, however, I was amazed to see that boy’s behavior replicated on a much grander scale.
Almost half of those present (some of them college or university presidents and provosts, many in their 50s and 60s) spent much of the time tapping on various electronic devices, mostly tablets connected wirelessly to the internet. They did that without any palpable sense of embarrassment, as if it was the most normal thing to do in such settings. During one plenary session, a woman in her late 30s snuck in late, settled in the seat next to me, and pulled out a tablet. She then spent almost an hour toggling frequently between Facebook, Gmail, Jezabel, a few shopping websites, and whatnot. Like the boy on the bus, she looked up from the screen a couple of times and tried to tune in to the speaker in front, but that never lasted long. I thought such behavior could serve as an ironic paradigm for understanding one of the main reasons for the apparent flagging of civic education at a moment when, as speaker after speaker emphasized, it was most needed.2
If it was so difficult for many of these educational leaders to look away from the screens in front of them, I wondered what a more geeky gathering would look like. I did not have to wonder long, for I stumbled upon Nicholas Carr’s vivid account of one such event. He had attended a conference on information technology during which most participants never really put down their smartphones and tablets. Whether they were attending a presentation or speaking to someone, they appeared to treat the words coming from the mouth of the flesh-and-blood speaker before them as just one data channel among many—to which they could not be reasonably expected to allocate their undivided attention.3
Of course, deploying this kind of “continuous partial attention”4 could be seen as a deliberate strategy—a calculated, often enthusiastic embrace of the level of multi-tasking we will all one day need in order to function productively in an IT-saturated milieu.5 But I strongly doubt this is the whole story, and I am not alone. The notion that surfing, clicking, scrolling, app manipulation, instant messaging, gaming, and other digital activities or touch-screen routines can become addictive has already received support from some psychologists, psychiatrists, and neuroscientists.6
This idea has also spread in the popular press and imagination since it resonates with some strong worries among parents and teachers in the United States and other wealthier countries.7 They have increasingly complained that they find it difficult to get many children to switch their attention to less compelling activities or forms of communication traditionally associated with schooling and even play. Concerns about some kind of digital addiction also reflect the anxieties of skeptics who feel, like Carr, that they have lost as grown-ups the mental quiet and sustained concentration needed for “deep reading.”8
Worries about compulsive digital interaction, especially online video-gaming, are particularly strong in some Asian countries where such habits have already produced visible health problems and other consequences, and have been accepted as meriting a clinical diagnosis. These have been most dramatically illustrated by a few tragic incidents. For example, in recent years several young men have died after prolonged gaming sessions. Those sometimes lasted two or three days, and during that time the victims did not sleep, barely ate, and eventually suffered physiological shut-down as a result of utter exhaustion.9
In one particularly shocking—yet telling—case, a South Korean couple left their three-month-old prematurely born daughter to starve to death in their apartment. While she was fading away, they spent long stretches of time at an internet café. There, they were engrossed in a popular role-playing online game in which their task was to nurture a virtual baby girl.10 Even in the absence of such lethal outcomes, the medical authorities in South Korea, China, and a few other countries have recognized internet addiction as a mental disorder and a major public health problem. They have consequently opened specialized clinics, sometimes employing very harsh methods, as part of efforts to curb perceived epidemics of compulsive gaming and other sorts of digital overindulgence.11
Some American psychologists are similarly apprehensive. Kimberly Young was the first to suggest a similar diagnosis.12 Over two decades ago, she founded the Center for Internet Addiction offering treatment (a lot less harsh than the Chinese variety) for the condition. Victoria Dunckley has cast an even wider net. She has attributed the tendency of many children and adolescents to act out and be easily distracted (to the point where they are diagnosed with ADHD or other disorders) to the hyperarousal triggered by chronic exposure to digital screens. In her view, interactive features reinforce the addictive potential that should have been obvious in the case of TV.13 In her blog dubbed Mental Wealth (hosted by Psychology Today) she makes tireless efforts to alert parents and educators about the increasing danger posed by the saturation of daily life with digital technology. Both psychologists offer recovery programs involving digital abstinence—with Young recommending a “digital detox” and Dunckley advising an “electronic fast.”14
Why is the unrelenting siren call of the internet and digital screens so irresistible for so many—particularly, but not only, the young? This question cannot be addressed without a vague comprehension of how the human brain processes information coming through the senses and from the body, and generates mental and behavioral responses to these “inputs.” The most relevant fact about the brain is that throughout its evolution it has acquired an elaborately layered organization. Parts which have developed more recently in mammals and humans are stacked on top of evolutionarily older parts which originally developed in reptiles. These rather different parts of the human brain need to function as a well-integrated whole. Such integration is achieved as the brain not only registers external stimuli, but also generates a lot of internal activity and responds to (and influences in an endless feedback loop) physiological processes throughout the whole body. This ongoing overall integration of the brain-body is vital if we are to navigate our natural, social, and technological environment in a productive and rewarding way.
Broadly speaking, the human brain can be seen as comprising three distinct parts—a paradigm suggested in the 1950s by neuroscientist Paul MacNeal who wrote of the “triune brain.”15 The brain stem sits on top of the spine and processes signals from different parts and organs of the body entering through the spinal cord. It contains centers which control basic physiological processes like breathing and the circulation of blood. This “reptilian brain” is also involved in the initial processing of touch, smell, and sound, and regulates key basic drives related to sex, social dominance, and territorial “ownership.”
On top of the “reptilian brain” is perched the more recently evolved and complex “mammalian brain.” It controls other basic biological processes like the maintenance of a steady body temperature and the release of stress hormones. It also generates various emotional reactions and regulates more complex social behaviors. The key centers involved in these processes, plus some older parts of the cortex, are often referred to as the “limbic system.”16 They provide instant emotional response to our complex physical and social environment. They also allow the development of the longer-term emotional attachments needed to motivate parents to take care of their offspring who, unlike newly-hatched reptiles, cannot survive on their own. Taken together, such emotional sensitivity and attachment provide the basis not just for individual survival, but also for the formation of stable family structures, as well as broader communal bonds.
These more primitive “brains” are wrapped in the neocortex. This thin but densely wrinkled neural sheet is the latest addition to the architecture of the brain. In humans, it contains some areas which are not so different from similar neural structures in other mammals, like the visual and motor cortices. But in the human brain the neocortex is much more developed. It underlies our capacity for language, thinking, emotional modulation, and a much more complex regulation of social behavior and even of basic drives.
Admittedly, this is an overly simplistic overview of the overall layout of the human brain. It does serve, though, to highlight the need for reliable integration of parts of the brain which are very different structurally and functionally. This integration is ideally achieved as lower and higher parts of the human brain are constantly involved in multiple processes of mutual activation and inhibition. As a result, the functioning of even the apparently more primitive “reptilian” and “mammalian” brains is modulated by signals coming from the neocortex and is thus quite different from ostensibly similar processes in animals. The activation of different parts of the neocortex, in its turn, is profoundly affected by signals coming from lower parts of the brain which convey information about external stimuli and physiological processes throughout the body.17 So thinking and decision-making become infused with bottom-up affective responses and visceral sensations—which are, in their turn, modulated through top-down processing.
The orchestration of all this top-down and bottom-up signaling is thought to be the prerogative of part of the neocortex—the prefrontal cortex (or the “executive brain”) which is also involved in abstract reasoning, planning, and the modulation of various emotional responses.18 In its turn, however, the prefrontal cortex is activated by signals coming from the thalamus, a structure deep in the midbrain, which helps integrate various sensory inputs. According to neuroscientist Rodolfo Llinás, the role of the thalamus is so fundamental that it, rather than the prefrontal cortex, can be seen as the “conductor” which prompts different parts of the neocortex to come online in response to different stimuli.19 The prefrontal cortex is also activated by dopamine synthesized in “reptilian” midbrain structures in response to (or anticipation of) various kinds of stimulation and to visceral signals coming through the brainstem. This intricate interplay between the neocortex and sub-cortical structures needs to be finely synchronized if the human brain is to function properly. The existence of these multiple feedback loops in the brain makes the task of understanding its functioning exceedingly complex.
The intricate hierarchical integration of the brain is made possible by the development of dedicated pathways which serve to tie the different parts together. Neuropsychiatrist Peter Whybrow refers to these as “information superhighways” since they carry multiple signals between spatially and functionally removed parts of the brain. These pathways contain relatively few neurons whose “cell bodies are rooted in the brain’s stem and their long axons spread upward like the branches of a tree to effectively connect the emergency systems of the reptilian brain with the limbic system and the new cortex.”20 Signals traveling along these neural “superhighways” trigger the release of many neurotransmitters in different parts of the brain. The most important among these chemical messengers are perhaps glutamate, serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine. Changes in their concentrations profoundly influence patterns of activation in affected brain areas.
Among these chemicals, the roles of norepinephrine and serotonin seem less complicated—if anything related to the workings of the brain can be uncomplicated. While norepinephrine activates the neurons which absorb it, serotonin helps calm down such neural excitation. Dopamine, however, has more ambiguous chemical effects (often combined with those of glutamate), and its synthesis is affected by other neurotransmitters. It has long been associated with the experience of pleasure, or, more broadly, the processing of various “rewards.” This perceived link was once demonstrated by multiple experiments which measured the release of various brain chemicals in response to different kinds of sensory gratification in lab animals—from the consumption of tasty food or drugs to mating. Those early experiments indicated that a dopamine squirt in the brain is normally experienced as intensely pleasurable. They therefore prompted neuroscientists to identify an associated “pleasure” or “reward center” in the midbrain—a part of the brain stem containing nodes of dopaminergic neurons.
For several decades, this model of the release and effects of dopamine seemed quite straightforward. That conventional view, however, was challenged by some neuroscientists.21 One of them, Jaak Panksepp, started to wonder if lab rats had a real “reward” center in their brains, as the prevailing theory of the day stipulated. In the experiments he conducted back in the 1970s, animals with elevated levels of dopamine in their brains did not seem to experience much “pleasure” or “reward” as conventionally understood. Instead, they appeared restless and agitated. Panksepp also noted that the highest concentrations of dopamine in rat brains were reached when the animals anticipated, or were surprised by, rewards. Rewards which rats had learned to anticipate, on the other hand, triggered much weaker dopamine surges.22 Other neuroscientists made similar observations putting into question the narrow association of dopamine release with pleasure. In the 1980s, Kent Berridge conducted experiments which led him to conclude that “wanting” could be distinguished (and potentially separated) from “liking”—the former mediated by dopamine, and the latter by opiates.23
To make sense of such observations, Panksepp felt he needed to reconceptualize the role of the dopamine system in the brain. He decided that instead of referring to “reward,” it would be much more appropriate to speak of a “seeking system.” This designation would indicate that the associated neural centers and pathways of that system seemed to provide the motivation animals needed if they were to engage in active exploration of their environment—which is essential for finding food and other resources, as well as potential mates. Dopamine, however, is also released in response to startling noises, other strong stimuli, psychological stress, physical pain, etc. It thus seems to play a broader role in generating motivation to pursue what enhances chances for survival and procreation, and avoid what diminishes these. For this reason, what Panksepp has dubbed the “seeking system” could be more broadly designated as the brain’s “dopaminergic-motivation system.”
As it turns out, this motivation system also underlies the kind of learning which can ensure future access to similar life essentials and—in humans—much more complex problem-solving on the basis of past experiences.24 It can, then, be seen as generating the impetus for novelty seeking, curiosity, sensitivity to mere cues, and the overall thirst for the knowledge animals and humans need in order to navigate in a successful and “rewarding” way their natural and social environment. In Jonah Lehrer’s words, such desire for knowledge “begins as a dopaminergic craving, rooted in the same primal pathway that also responds to sex, drugs and rock and roll.”25
This realization leads to an obvious question: what can trigger the kind of dopaminergic craving which won’t be satisfied by more direct sensory gratification; but would instead provide motivation for the pursuit of knowledge, particularly the kind of knowledge that is removed from immediate personal experiences? Resolving this conundrum requires a more detailed look at the way the dopaminergic motivation system facilitates the integration of higher and lower parts of the brain.
When different sensory stimuli are processed in the brain, the resulting neural signaling takes two routes. One activates immediately the amygdala, a pair of almond-shaped neural nodes which are a vital part of the limbic system. When sufficiently strong, such direct activation of the amygdala can set off immediate behavioral responses—as when we pull back from a hot plate or jump away from the projected route of a car racing toward us. Signals from the amygdala also set off the overall fight-or-flight response and the release of stress hormones and other chemicals throughout the body, a process which also affects the brain.
The other route of sensory processing passes through the prefrontal cortex. There, incoming signals are automatically cross-referenced with relevant associations, impressions, and—in humans—ideas called forth from memory. On the basis of this synthesis, the prefrontal cortex makes a more complex assessment of the stimuli. It sends signals to other parts of the cortex which influence the formation of overall sensations and perceptions. Signals from the prefrontal cortex also reach the amygdala, prompting it to quieten down in the absence of real danger, or once the danger has passed.
The intensity of the amygdala’s initial activation provides an instant, automatic assessment of imminent threats. The amygdala, working in synchrony with the insula (a brain center recruited in the processing of basic and social emotions)26 and parts of the prefrontal cortex, is also involved in a broader emotional “tagging” of sensory signals or events. These are thus marked with positive or negative “valence” with different intensity.27 Such affective tagging can be influenced by signals coming from the prefrontal cortex which reflect broader experiences and expectations. Examples would include the stronger pleasure we feel when we sip more expensive wine; or the richer (or more conceptual) perception of a painting by an art critic.
Signals coming from both the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex activate dopaminergic neurons in the midbrain, a key part of the motivation system. In response, these neurons start releasing dopamine. Neurons in the midbrain “project” long axons (which form some of the “superhighways” Whybrow describes) to the prefrontal cortex, the amygdala, and other brain centers. Dopamine thus carries a chemically encoded motivational message which, in high concentrations, can produce a euphoric or even manic sensation. This neural “high” indicates that some bits and pieces of information may have greater importance for the organism, and are worthy of attention and storage in long-term memory.28
This is, very crudely described, the physiological basis of the drive to explore the environment and seek out vital resources, mates, and other “rewards,” which can include the joy of mutual grooming and play. Inhibitory signals from the prefrontal cortex can then help calm down the amygdala and dopaminergic neurons in the midbrain, giving the brain and the whole organism a much needed respite from stimulation and emotional excitation. Such inhibition of affective arousal which is no longer appropriate or necessary is an essential function of the “executive brain.”
I wish I could provide a more evocative description of these intricate processes. A more light-hearted or metaphorical account, however, would not be true to the spirit of contemporary neuroscience—so bear with me for a few additional technical details. The interplay of the dopaminergic motivation system, the amygdala, the “executive brain,” and other neural networks is also affected by the release of many different substances. In addition to changing levels of neurotransmitters and hormones, tiny molecules of various chemicals called peptides are also released. These are secreted under the influence of affective arousal. They dock at multiple receptors on cells throughout the body, modulating their overall functioning. Emotions thus become whole-organism responses interlinked with brain activation in a never-ending feedback loop.29 Another loop is created as the electromagnetic fields generated by the whole brain, and maybe the heart,30 influence patterns of neural firing and cell activation throughout the brain and body.
Signals coming through neural pathways from internal organs play a similarly critical role in the overall orchestration of neural, mental, and behavioral responses. Among these, signals sent from and to neurons located in the heart31 and gut,32 and processed through the insula, are particularly important. Also, high levels of physical activity seem to stimulate the formation of new neurons, and to provide higher levels of energy within existing ones.33 Such ongoing mutual activation, inhibition, and feedback contributes to the formation of instant and longer-term, emotionally colored assessments of the significance of new experiences, events, facts, and ideas. These complex affective-visceral responses are key to learning, as they help tag some impressions as worthy of storage in long-term memory.34
Such storage depends on the formation and reinforcement of synaptic connections. While dopamine seems to provide the motivation for repeatedly seeking the experiences triggering such neurophysiological changes, the release of norepinephrine and glutamate in the brain appears to directly facilitate the formation of new synaptic connections. This process is also assisted by other substances released in the brain as a result of emotional arousal. Meanwhile, epigenetic changes influence the synthesis of the proteins involved in the formation of long-term memories.35 Norepinephrine, the brain twin of the stress hormone adrenaline, also increases the overall excitability of neurons, including dopaminergic neurons in the midbrain. As already noted, all these interactions and modifications, in their turn, are not merely a series of complex responses to external stimuli. They represent mental models influenced by flashes of relevant recollections and associations related to past experiences.36
This complicated and delicate neural dance, involving multiple brain centers, pathways, networks, chemicals, and electromagnetic waves and fields (and overall brain-body integration) is at the heart of our biological and social being. In a well-tempered brain latched onto a healthy body, such ongoing neural processing provides us with information regarding potential threats and opportunities, and with appropriate motivation to explore our environment, acquire new knowledge, and form lasting attachments. There is, however, a potential danger. The dopaminergic motivation system can be easily hijacked by powerful stimuli whose processing may not be entirely conducive to our personal thriving, and even to our longer-term survival.