Many of us crave a mental diet loaded with information. How is that impacting the way we think, feel and interact with others?
Research shows we are infovores – that our brains crave new information.
That may be especially true for creative, multitalented people.
USC professor Irving Biederman has investigated the neuroscience behind the infovore phenomenon, and comments about some of the research:
‘In the areas of the cortex that initially receive visual or auditory information, opioids are sparse.
‘But in “association areas,” where the sensory information triggers memory and taps into previous knowledge, there is a high density of opioid receptors.
‘So the more a new piece of information tickles that part of your brain where you interpret the scene or conversation, the bigger the opioid hit.’
From his article The 411 to avoid boredom, Los Angeles Times, July 19, 2008.
[Brain scan image above is from the Human Connectome Project, also used in my article Do Artists Have Unique Brains?]
The title I chose for this article is partly a reference to the book My Teeming Brain: Creativity in Creative Writers, by Jane Piirto, Ph.D., who notes in her article Themes in the Lives of Successful U.S. Adult Creative Writers, that her book title comes from the poet Keats who knew the experience well, writing in a sonnet:
“When I have fears that I may cease to be / before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain…”
Are people fascinated by so much because of their intellectual development, or does consciously feeding our mind stimulate high level thought and creative ability?
Writer Steve Pavlina poses that intriguing question, and writes:
“What you learn in one area can often be applied to others.
“For example, Leonardo da Vinci, considered a genius by any reasonable standard, achieved competence across a diverse set of fields, including art, music, science, anatomy, engineering, architecture, and many others.
“While some would argue that such wide-ranging interests were a result of his intelligence, I think it’s more likely that they were the cause of it—or at least a major contributing factor.
“By exposing himself to such a rich variety of input, da Vinci found patterns that others never noticed. This vastly amplified his problem-solving abilities.
“What’s considered commonplace in one field often has creative applications in other disciplines.”
(The painting is a Leonardo da Vinci self-portrait. See more about the polymath below, and in my article Thinking Like Leonardo Da Vinci, which includes quotes by Michael J. Gelb, author of How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci.)
Connecting ideas that may seem unrelated
One of the questions in a giftedness self-test from the Gifted Development Center is “Do you often connect seemingly unrelated ideas?”
See more in article Giftedness Characteristics.
One way to help track those ideas and stimulate more awareness of a wider range of disciplines – which may turn out to be related – is to use mind mapping or idea mapping.
See imindmap.com for more – site of Tony Buzan, author of The Mind Map Book.
Can indulging our tastes for information help creative thinking? Maybe, depending on our intention and selection of what we are reading, viewing, hearing.
But there are many warnings about using digital devices and consuming media addictively.
In an article on the topic, Heather Wilhelm reports:
“According to the latest data from Apple, smartphone users check in compulsively, averaging around 80 times a day. (A 2013 Kleiner Perkins report estimated the number at a whopping 150 times a day.)
“American adults eat, sleep, and breathe media, according to a recent eMarketer survey, consuming an average of twelve hours a day.”
She adds that “studies have linked smartphones to decreased concentration, lower problem-solving skills, a general sense of “brain drain,” and depression.
“A growing number of Silicon Valley insiders — including Justin Rosenstein, who invented the Facebook “Like” button — are publicly pushing back against highly developed and intentionally addictive social-media apps that they compare to heroin.
But, she notes, this is not just about the adult mind:
“If adults can’t handle smartphone technology, how could kids possibly stand a chance?
“Despite this, and despite the fact that it seems highly questionable to hand an immature young person what is essentially a very expensive portable Internet porn finder/social-media stalking system/mean girls text center, American kids are getting smartphones at earlier and earlier ages.
“The average age of acquisition, in fact, is currently ten years old.”
From her article Our Toxic Smartphone Addiction, National Review, Oct 12 2017.
[Photo is from article: Younger Smartphone Users Opt for Social Media.]
video: A 2.5 Year-Old Has A First Encounter with An iPad
Benefits of being an infovore
Developing my series of websites as a limited webmaster has “forced” me to learn how to better understand html and css coding – something I fought, partly because it did not seem to fit in with my more “artistic” passions to research and publish psychology and personal development information.
But maybe learning the html coding ‘foreign language’ has cognitive benefits.
A post on the Developing Intelligence site asks, “What if training ourselves on one task yielded improvements in all other tasks we perform?
“This is the promise of the cognitive training movement, which is increasingly showing that such ‘far transfer’ of training is indeed possible, while short of being ‘universal transfer.’
“Interestingly, this phenomenon might be most likely to occur for some of the most abstract and challenging cognitive functions.”
Connessione and eclectic thinking like da Vinci
In her article Everything Is Connected, Linda Dessau explains that in his book How to think like Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Gelb defines the concept of Connessione as “A recognition of and appreciation for the interconnectedness of all things and phenomena. Systems thinking.”
Dessau adds that Gelb “describes the many ‘playful, imaginary combinations’ that Leonardo made…
“As artists we delight in ‘playful, imaginary combinations’ – we’re in the business of creating things that didn’t exist before.
“Our playfulness can be seen when we manipulate objects, words or ideas into new forms simply because it delights us to do it.”
“In the same spirit as those earlier collectors filling their cabinets of curiosities, I feel compelled to collect quite a variety of things.
“I draw artistic inspiration from the treasures I find at the flea market.
“I like old toys, books, photographs, anatomical models, stuffed animals, skeletons, religious statues, and vintage paper ephemera.”
[Photo of Mark Ryden studio is from his Facebook page.]
Activating genetic potential
Many other artists and scientists also collect and are fascinated by a wide range of stuff and ideas in current and previous cultures.
In his article How to be a genius (New Scientist magazine), David Dobbs declares, “What we call talent or genius illustrates vividly what the past 25 years have taught us about gene expression – that our genetic potentials are activated and realised only through environment and experience.
“Natural buoyancy merely gets you off the bottom. You rise to the top by pumping yourself up.
“So is the ideal of innate genius dead? If not, should we kill it? Certainly a clear-eyed analysis shows that ‘genius’ is really a set of exceptional skills cultivated through disciplined study.”
Excitabilities and advanced development
One of the central ideas of Polish psychiatrist and psychologist Kazimierz Dabrowski, MD, PhD (1902 – 1980) was that individuals having strong “overexcitabilities” (OEs) were good candidates for higher level development.
These OEs are categorized as psychomotor, intellectual, imaginative, emotional and sensual, and many writers and educators use them as a basis for identifying gifted and talented individuals.
Intellectual Overexcitability is defined as “processing information, and decision making localized in the cognitive sphere.
“It is manifested as a drive to ask probing questions, quest for knowledge, theoretical thinking, reverence for logic, preoccupation with theoretical problems, etc.; most frequently associated with exceptional abilities in children.”
From article Theory of Positive Disintegration as a Model of Personality Development For Exceptional Individuals, By Elizabeth Mika.
You can learn more about his ideas in the areas of creativity and personality, and the power and pitfalls of teeming brains, on the page Dabrowski / advanced development.
Using digital technology affects our brains
Research using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) at UCLA indicates “Daily exposure to high technology – computers, smart phones, video games, search engines such as Google and Yahoo – stimulates brain cell alteration and neurotransmitter release, gradually strengthening new neural pathways in our brains while weakening old ones.”
From Your iBrain: How Technology Changes the Way We Think [free article preview], by Gary Small, Md and Gigi Vorgan, Scientific American Mind October, 2008.
Another article on their work [“Surfing the Internet Boosts Aging Brains” By Tara Parker-Pope, The New York Times, October 16, 2008] notes that “compared with reading, the Internet’s wealth of choices requires that people make decisions about what to click on, an activity that engages important cognitive circuits in the brain.
“A simple, everyday task like searching the Web appears to enhance brain circuitry in older adults, demonstrating that our brains are sensitive and can continue to learn as we grow older,” Dr. Small said.
In a letter to the editor of Atlantic Monthly, Dr. Small writes, “The average young person spends more than eight hours each day using technology (computers, PDAs, TV, videos), and much less time engaging in direct social contact.
“Our UCLA brain-scanning studies are showing that such repeated exposure to technology alters brain circuitry, and young developing brains (which usually have the greatest exposure) are the most vulnerable.
“Instead of the traditional generation gap, we are witnessing the beginning of a brain gap that separates digital natives, born into 24/7 technology, and digital immigrants, who came to computers and other digital technology as adults.”
Dr. Small continues, “Today, video-game brain, Internet addiction, and other technology side effects appear to be suppressing frontal-lobe executive skills and our ability to communicate face-to-face.
“Instead, our brains are developing circuitry for online social networking and are adapting to a new multitasking technology culture.”
[Quotes from “Your Brain on Technology: Rewired and Addicted?” by Paul Barsch.]
Gary Small, MD and Gigi Vorgan are authors of the books:
Does Googling rewire our brains?
Writer Nicholas Carr comments , “Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory.
“My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing.
“I’m not thinking the way I used to think.
“I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy.
“My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose.”
But, he continues, “That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do.
“I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.
“I think I know what’s going on. For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet.”
From his article Is Google Making Us Stupid? Atlantic, July/August 2008.
Nicholas Carr is author of The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains.
Laurie A. Sheppard describes in her article Curse of the Creatives some of the consequences we suffer from seeking so much information and trying to do so much:
“If you feel driven, yet overwhelmed by the many diverse life goals you’re having difficulty completing, you’ve likely caught the ‘curse of the creatives.’
“Your drivenness is caused by your self-expectation that you should do it all.”
She notes that a Times magazine article, The Multitasking Generation, said “decades of research (not to mention common sense) indicate that the quality of one’s output and depth of thought deteriorate as one attends to ever more tasks.”