Oh, hello.
Technology isn't just changing our lives.
It's changing our brains.
Not just how they think,
but how they look.
It's been shown that playing certain video games for hours
can improve your memory for details,
your ability to navigate space
in video games,
and can make your brain...
Well, certain parts of it... bigger.
But scientists want to know if exploring digital worlds
can change our brains in ways that improve our ability
to navigate the real world.
To find out, we've built a giant maze
to test their theories for the first time ever
outside the world of computers.
And my job?
I'm the lab rat.
[theme music playing]
[vacuum humming, stops]
Our brains have been profoundly transformed
by our interactions with technology.
A lot of the information that I used to have to store
in my brain is now stored in my phone.
My contacts, my schedule.
In many ways, I've delegated
what used to be done by this organ
to this new external organ.
Doing that frees up by brain's resources
for other things that matter
or that technology can't quite do for us yet.
So while we all don't have implants in our brains yet,
technology has already found a way into our heads,
which is why you may find it deeply disturbing
to see me do something like this.
Sh...
[music playing]
[Michael] Studies show we can improve our brains
by having enriching experiences,
like playing a new challenging video game.
To learn more about this,
I came to UC Irvine's Stark Lab to speak with experts
in the field of learning and memory.
So Dane and Craig, you guys work on
learning and memory.
What about them? - So the lab is trying to figure out
how memory works, how it works in the brain.
[Craig] And one brain structure, in the temporal lobe
that we know is important to memory is
the hippocampus.
[Michael] - So what does the hippocampus do?
- We know it has a role in memory
and, really, a certain kind of memory.
The hippocampus is really involved
when you need to rapidly form new arbitrary associations.
You know, remembering what you did yesterday
definitely needs the hippocampus.
[Craig] Maybe we'll go the store, we park our car in the lot,
and we need to be able to remember
not just, "I parked my car in the lot,"
"I parked my car in this exact spot in the lot."
- [Michael] Right. - [Craig] And those details,
that's what the hippocampus seems to be really be
helping us out on.
- [Michael] And you keep looking down at this piece of chewed
bubblegum on the book, is that a hippocampus?
- [Craig] Yes. This actually is my hippocampus.
- Is this the whole thing or is it symmetric...
- [Craig] That's it...
Oh, there's one on the other side.
- That looks just like this?
- Yeah, mirror image of it.
[Michael] In 2015, Dr. Stark and Dr. Clemenson,
conducted a study to show
how video games affect the brain.
They gathered participants
who normally didn't play video games
and split them up into three groups.
A control group who didn't play
any video games for two weeks, an active control group
who played two-dimensional games for two weeks,
and an experimental group
who played 3D games for two weeks.
Beforehand, they had all the participants
perform two virtual tasks on computers
to measure their spatial memory.
[Dane] As soon as they came back, we re-administered those two tasks.
And what we found was that the people who played the 3D game
saw an improving in their test scores,
whereas the control group
and active control group did not.
We didn't do brain scans,
but we can speculate that there were changes
to the experimental group's hippocampi.
- [Michael] So what are we going to be doing to me here?
- [Dane] So we're gonna do everything that we've done before
in our past studies,
except we're gonna add two new things.
Uh, the first is we're gonna add some brain scans,
to see if we see a change
in the structural side of your hippocampus.
I mean we've never actuall looked at somebody's brain scans
before and after they played video games.
And the second thing we're actually gonna do
is we're gonna put you through a real-world space.
- [Craig] You're gonna be the rat in a maze.
[Michael] This is truly untested territory.
The effect of video-gaming on spatial memory
has never been studied in a physical environment
on a scale this big and comprehensive.
I will have to navigate my way
through a 3,600-square-foot physical maze.
Will playing video games improve my mental skills
in the real world?
If so, society will have
a whole new way to look at gaming.
First, we had to get
baseline measurements of my brain.
[Craig] Welcome to the MRI Center.
We're gonna be taking a whole series of scans of you,
as the before scan
to then see what's gonna be happening to your brain
as a function of actually doing the gaming.
- [Michael] Cool. What kind of things are you looking for?
- Changes in the size and shape of your hippocampus
and also changes in the connectivity between brain regions.
[Michael] My brain was scanned using diffusion MRI,
with a special emphasis
on my all-important hippocampus.
[music playing]
[Craig] So this first test
is a standard memory test that we do.
It's called an object recognition memory test.
[Michael] This test began by showing me
a series of random objects.
I did my best to commit every one of them to memory.
[Michael] Okay.
Finished. - All right.
What we're gonna do now though, is we're gonna test
your memory for those objects. - Okay.
- [Craig] And this is actually where it starts to tap
into the hippocampus that we know is so important
for things like spatial memory.
[Michael] This time, I had to view another series of objects
and identify any that were identical
to the ones I'd seen previously.
The catch, some of the items were very similar
to the earlier ones,
but not exactly the same.
This tested my memory for details
and very slight changes.
Okay.
[Michael] Next up, a virtual version of a water maze
normally used by rodents.
[Dane] The idea is that you are trying to locate
a hidden platform in a pool of water.
- [Michael] Oh, man,
I'm so glad I'm not a lab rat.
This task really put my spatial memory to the test.
I had to find the same invisible underwater platform
over and over again,
using only the shapes of the mountains as my guide,
but at least I didn't have to get wet.
Hey.
That was more difficult than I expected.
- [Craig] These are the sorts of tasks that we've been able to do
because we can put them on a computer.
And we're gonna revisit them
after you've done the video games.
But we also have a really great opportunity here now
to be able to try to take it out of just doing it on the computer
and actually get it into the real world.
- Have you guys done this before?
- No. We don't get to do this kind of thing.
- Well, welcome to the Mind Field. - Awesome.
[music playing]
[Michael] So this is it? It's huge.
- [Craig] This is what we brought you here for,
to have a real-world test of memory.
You're gonna be a lab rat in a maze.
So this is a big first for us.
It's a big first really for memory research.
- [Michael] So how do you think that'll effect
what you guys have already seen,
which is that moving around in a 3D environment
in a video game can actually physically affect your brain?
- [Dane] We would expect that if we can somehow, kind of,
train your hippocampus to be better at spatial memory
and spatial navigation, we would see improvements
in some of these areas.
- [Craig] And it's not just gonna be running a maze.
You've got objects embedded inside here,
and we're gonna be testing your ability to remember where everything is.
- [Michael] Oh, and build a mental map of whatever's inside there.
- [Craig] So you have five minutes.
Go on in, explore, learn the maze,
and learn the objects.
- [Dane] Go.
[Michael] Because the walls were six feet tall,
I was unable to get a bird's-eye view.
My task was to create a spatial memory
based entirely on the angles and turns of the white walls
I could see at eye level,
and a few tall trees and light poles
outside the maze.
Okay. So I've oriented myself.
The entrance is that way.
There's an exit over there.
I'm considering this the right side, that the left side.
I've got a vague idea of where things are
that I feel like exist along the outside edge,
but I don't know about a lot of the stuff inside.
[Craig] And time.
All right. So now you've had a chance to explore the maze,
find out where the objects are.
Now we're gonna test your memory...
- Okay. - And we'll be timing you
and seeing where you go.
- Okay. - Okay. You ready?
- I'm ready. - [Dane] So your first object
is the bicycle pump.
Go. - [Michael] Pump. Okay.
[Michael] Pump was just always making right turns,
hugging the rightmost part of... pump.
Ha ha! Yes. Easy. Okay.
Now, I guess I do the opposite to get out.
Left side... yup, I think I should make this turn.
There it is.
You asked for a pump? - [Dane] All right.
Item two, the basketball.
[Michael] Later, Dr. Stark and Dr. Clemenson
would evaluate my performance
on how fast I was, the number of errors I made,
and whether I took the most optimal route each time.
[Craig] And time.
- [Dane] Third item is the cat. Go.
[Michael] Here kitty, kitty, kitty.
[Craig] Got it.
- [Dane] The fourth item is the pillow.
[Michael] Retracing my steps.
- [Dane] The crayon. - [Michael] Easy.
- [Dane] The book. - [Michael] Okay.
- [Dane] The boot.
Last item is the water bottle.
Go. - [Michael] Water bottle.
I think...
By...
Yeah, it was back here.
Maybe on the other side of this wall.
No? Oh, shoot.
Okay. Maybe it's down here.
Oh, wait.
That's... no?
That's the central cube.
It was down some sort of...
a long corridor like this in this area.
Oh, man.
[Michael] Until this point, things had gone pretty well,
but now it felt like my hippocampus was failing me.
With most of the items now gone,
I couldn't use them for reference,
and it was difficult to distinguish the differences
between the various white corridors.
Oh, dang it.
Oh, what about through...
Got it.
Bottle coming up. - [Craig] All right. There you go.
- [Michael] Got it. Nice. - [Craig] That one was a little tougher, huh?
- [Michael] Yeah, it was tougher.
- [Dane] So we found all eight objects. - Yup.
- [Dane] Now, we're gonna make it a little bit more difficult.
So we're gonna move onto the next phase
and that's gonna be from the other side.
- [Craig] Navigating the maze in reverse
will be an even bigger test of your spatial memory.
We're gonna give you a list of four things to get,
in order.
- [Dane] So the first sequence is the book,
the bottle, the crayon,
and the boot.
Go. - [Michael] Book.
I think...
That's the ball.
Got it.
Oh, yeah, bottle was that hard one,
but now I remember which alley to go down.
Perfect.
Crayon.
Boot. Don't want that.
Here it is.
Okay. Now, I need the boot.
Oh, I just saw the boot,
but how did I...
Got it. I'm done. I'm coming back.
Got them. - [Craig] All right.
So then the next four.
- [Dane] The pump, the pillow,
the basketball, and the cat.
- [Craig] All right. Excellent. - [Dane] All right. Nice job.
- [Michael] Okay. So that was really fun,
but I can't be the only subject.
This experiment could use a control.
How else will we know that me, enriching my life
with daily video game playing,
really causes a change in my spatial memory, right?
Well, luckily for that,
we've got a nice matched control.
Guys similar to me.
Okay, one of them has too much hair,
but you guys look good.
You ready? - [all] Ready.
[Michael] In this experiment,
it was important to have a control group.
My look-alikes had to go through the exact same tests
that I did to establish their individual baselines.
The difference would be that they would play
absolutely no video games for the next 10 days.
Then any change in my performance
would be compared against any changes in theirs.
[music playing]
Next, I began my gaming regimen,
starting from an ideal baseline,
since I hadn't played video games
in years.
Would ten days of gaming really make a difference?
[music playing]
Technology isn't just affecting the way we remember things.
[whirring] It's also playing with the empathy
and social circuits of our brains.
In fact, in many cases,
we are more comfortable relating to machines
than we are to people.
Just think about how much we care about our phones.
Roboticist and MIT Media Lab alum,
Alex Reben, invented the BlabDroid,
a miniature robot equipped with a camera
and an innocent little voice
that asks very personal questions
of unsuspecting pedestrians.
[BlabDroid] If you could take back one mistake,
what would it be?
Oh, gosh. I only get to take back one?
[Michael] The majority of people
instantly shared intimate details.
[BlabDroid] Tell me something that you've never told
a stranger before.
I'm scared I won't be able to love
and to let myself go in a love relationship.
[Michael] In many ways,
we are more comfortable talking to a machine
than a human.
But what about talking through a machine?
I mean, it's often easier to say
difficult things to a person via text
instead of in real life, isn't it?
Well, what if the person on the other end
wasn't a friend or a significant other,
but was a therapist?
A mental healthcare startup called Talkspace
allows adult users who pay a weekly fee
to text therapists for advice.
[woman] At Talkspace, we believe that therapy
should be anonymous, stigma-free,
simple, affordable, and comfortable.
Texting can give users the distance they need
to be open and honest.
And messages can be sent when the user wants,
not during an appointment
or business hours only.
[woman] Talkspace,
therapy for how we live today.
[Michael] How am I?
Better now that my phone is working.
Sometimes, however, we aren't looking for technology to comfort us.
We're finding ourselves wanting to comfort technology.
This is a ROBOTIS OP2.
Cute little fellow, isn't he?
So how did that make you feel?
Bad?
Well, why?
Robots are just machines,
metal and wires and computer chips.
But we spend a lot of time with technology.
We depend on technology,
and we care about it.
But the degree to which we empathize with it
depends on context.
[music playing]
[Michael] Recently, my Vsauce office
was invaded by bugs...
Robot hexbugs, that is.
These bugs are made of plastic, metal,
and electronic circuitry.
They aren't alive.
But could certain conditions
cause them to inspire empathy in humans?
A 2015 MIT study
found that giving a robot movement, a name,
and a personal backstory
tends to increase its anthropomorphic effect,
which can lead to an emotional connection
with humans.
We decided to see this in action.
I'm Michael, thank you for your help today. - Of course. Pleasure.
[Michael] In our demonstration,
our subjects think they're focus testing
a new user-friendly technology.
In this case, they're given a lifeless hexbug
and then asked to describe it.
This thing kind of looks like a bug,
only I don't know what it does.
It has a switch on the bottom.
- It's light.
- It's sort of a rectangle,
but the ends are like hexagons.
[Michael] Then it was time to test their empathy.
- Now, Karina, what I would like you to do now
is place the item in the middle of that block.
There's a magnet that will hold it.
And I would like for you to take this mallet
and please smash it.
Yeah. Really? Okay. This is cool.
[Michael] Our participants demonstrated no resistance
to smashing this lifeless object.
Many of them even seemed to enjoy it.
Do you feel bad for breaking it?
- Not really. I felt indifferent to it.
- Not really 'cause it wasn't real. [laughing]
- Not really.
[Michael] While these subjects exhibited no empathy
to the inanimate bugs,
look what happened when we gave the exact same bugs
names and movement.
This is Margaret. Okay.
I'm gonna place Margaret down here.
I just want you to take a moment
to watch Margaret, all right?
And you could feel free to pick her up.
She's really well-behaved.
She's honestly one of our favorites. - [woman, laughing] Okay.
- So how would you describe Margaret's personality?
- A little erratic right now,
but I think if I pick her up, she calms down.
[Michael] Notice how the subject has already
anthropomorphized the object, referring to it as "she."
- Maybe she feeds off my energy.
- Could be.
- Go towards the light.
Go towards the middle.
- [Michael] Do you think Margaret likes you?
- Yeah, maybe that's why she's doing this,
and maybe when I go like that,
she doesn't act all erratic.
- That's Aaron.
- Hi, Aaron.
- He can be a bit of a pistol.
- No way. - Yes.
It really depends on who's holding him.
- [laughing]
Oh, yeah. He's got a lot of energy.
Aaron, hi.
- [Michael] Now that you've interacted with Eli a bit more,
how would you describe his personality?
- Probably he's just nervous. He's scared.
He doesn't know what's going on. - Hey, Joe.
[Michael] Will these subjects be just as willing
to smash their bugs?
- Amy, I'm gonna place Margaret right here,
and then I would like for you to take this mallet,
and I'd like you to smash it.
- No.
I don't wanna hurt it.
- Just take this mallet and smash Aaron.
[music playing]
[Michael] I'm gonna ask you to take this mallet,
and I'd like for you to smash it.
- Smash it?
Hit it?
- And, Chris...
- You want me to kill Joe?
- Please smash Joe.
- Ugh.
Joe, I'm sorry.
Oh, Joe. Joe.
[music playing]
- Now, how did it feel to smash Aaron?
- It didn't feel good, you know,
after spending time with him
and getting to know him.
- Even though it's lifeless
and doesn't have a mind of its own,
instantly, I grew attached to it,
because when I put it in my hand,
I felt its energy.
- I'm sorry, Joe.
- Do you feel bad? - I do.
I do feel bad about Joe.
He was pretty cool.
- Oh, he's back.
- He's back?
- Pump, pump.
- Would you smash him again to make sure
he doesn't come back?
- No. - Why not?
- I mean, he survived it. He survived it once.
I'm not gonna do it again.
[Michael] Clearly, it doesn't take much for humans
to become emotionally attached to technology.
But after my ten days of video-gaming...
Nice.
I was about to find out if technology had
affected my spatial memory
and my physical brain.
[music playing]
[Michael] All right. It's been ten days.
- [Craig] Exactly, so we're gonna look at the difference between
your test ten days ago and your test now
to see do we see any change.
[Michael] First, I had to retake
the object recognition memory test
and the Morris water maze task,
both of which had been revised with different content
than they had the last time.
I think I did better.
- [Craig] Well, Dane and I will analyze all this data and see how you did.
But now we got to go back to the full-size maze.
[music playing]
[Craig] So we've got a new maze.
Tore down the old one, built a new one
to try to be isomorphic.
So it has sort of the same level of difficulty.
The same number of choice points,
the same number of turns,
the same total distance to each of one the objects
to try to have a similar maze, but that's new.
Three, two, one, go.
[Michael] Right around here,
we got a bonsai.
As before, I was given five minutes
to familiarize myself with the maze
and where all of the objects were.
Now, this is where I was before I hugged that wall,
so if I hug the second right wall
and stay all the way right, a vase.
Was my hippocampus working better?
At this point, it was hard to tell.
[Craig] Thirty seconds.
I'm not even sure I've discovered
all the objects hidden here.
[Craig] And time.
[Michael] Then my test began.
[Dane] First object is a rubber duck.
Go. - Rubber duck was way over here.
Yeah! How do you like that?
I got a duck.
- Second item is the hat. Go.
[Michael] With this maze, I found myself instinctively
using a different approach.
Top hat.
Instead of thinking of the overall geography of the maze
like I did last time,
this time I was remembering specific details.
Second right, hug the turn, got it.
Literally recalling certain corners,
turns, and straightaways.
Bonsai.
Now blue vase.
Oh, wow. It's actually a cool vase.
But would this improve my overall performance?
I got you a backpack.
- [Craig] All right. - [Dane] Excellent.
- [Craig] So we've gotten all the objects.
But, of course, we have another memory test
that we're gonna do here.
We're gonna go around to the other side of the maze
and test your memory from there.
- [Michael] All right. - [Dane] So your first sequence
is the blue seahorse the flashlight,
the rubber duck, and the bonsai tree.
Go.
[Michael] With the multiple item tasks,
even though I was working from the opposite entrance,
I continued to recall various details of the maze,
which seemed to serve me well.
From there, it's just a little spiral.
Nice.
[bell dings]
[Dane] All right. Your next sequence is the blue vase,
the hat, the backpack,
and the baseball glove. - [Craig] Hit it.
And time. - [Dane] Awesome.
- [Craig] So how was it?
- That was not as hard as I expected.
It was about details. - [Craig] Right.
- [Michael] I was literally thinking, "Oh, okay.
There's that turn,
and I could do one or two things.
The glove's the first one.
The bonsai's the one even before."
I didn't even plan that at all. It just kind of happened.
[Michael] My look-alikes were also tested in the new maze.
Have you been playing video games?
[all] No, sir.
[Michael] Again, their non-gaming condition
would be the control,
with my performance
measured against theirs.
[Craig] All right. We're here for scan number two.
[Michael] Finally, my brain was scanned once again
to determine whether any physical changes had occurred.
Dr. Stark and Dr. Clemenson would analyze the MRI
along with all the other data and report their findings.
[music playing]
[Michael] I feel like my hippocampus
is a little bit bigger.
Yep. Actually, no, I don't know.
I'm anxious to see what your results are.
- [Craig] I guess let's start off first
with the object recognition task.
And it's important to note that in our control test without video-gaming,
people do not improve on this task, but...
your memory got better.
You went up by ten points.
Ten points is actually 20 years' worth
of what happens to us as we age.
- [Michael] Oh, wow.
That's about what you might see
in someone who's getting really old,
but they might go down by ten points. - [Craig] Exactly.
- [Dane] So the second one we did was the virtual version
of the water maze task, and you actually performed
30% better the second time you did it.
- [Michael] Hey, not bad.
I could tell that I was using better strategies.
- Yeah.
- We also had the real maze. - [Michael] Yeah.
- [Craig] As you know, we made two mazes.
Despite our efforts to try to equate them,
the second maze was a little bit more difficult
than the first maze.
If we took a look at things
like how quickly you got the objects,
how many errors you made, and we looked
at the control subjects' performance in pre versus post.
So on all of them,
they actually got a little bit slower in maze two,
and all but one of them made more errors.
We took a look at your performance.
You didn't get slower from maze one to two.
You actually got faster.
- [Michael] Really? - [Craig] And you made the same
exact number of errors.
So they don't improve, and you did.
And even though this experiment
had a small number of subjects,
the results are really consistent with our virtual maze study
with 70 test subjects.
- [Craig] All right. - Thank you, video games.
What about inside my brain?
- [Craig] Inside your brain, it's a little tougher to really tell.
We would expect that any effect of this
is going to be small.
I mean, we couldn't take your hippocampus
and make it twice as big
because then it would have to be pushing something else out.
So it's just not going to be a large change.
So where we did find a difference
is actually in the shape of the hippocampus.
What we saw is there were some regions
in the hippocampus on both sides
that appear to have changed shape
from day one before gaming
to day ten after gaming.
- What's really surprising to me is that as an adult,
my brain is still changing.
That makes me wanna take better care of my brain.
- [Craig] Yes.
- Exercise it more, 'cause it is a thing that can change.
I'm not just stuck with what I have now, today.
- I mean, in all of this, I think that the big takeaway
is that doing things,
giving your brain something to learn,
something to do, something to figure out,
this is what we think is actually
keeping your brain sharp.
- One way to do that is to keep watching Mind Field.
- [Craig] Exactly.
[music playing]
[Michael] As our relationship with technology becomes ever stronger,
people are bound to worry about what it will do to our brains.
Will offloading memory and computing
to our machines make us dumber?
Will our empathy for machines have negative consequences
for how we interact with each other?
Well, let's look back to another time
a new kind of technology threatened
to fundamentally change our brains.
Two and a half thousand years ago,
the Greek philosopher, Socrates,
worried that the wide use of writing
would have a negative impact on people's minds.
He said that writing would, to quote his student, Plato,
"Create forgetfulness,
because people will not use their memories.
They will trust the external written characters
and not remember themselves."
Socrates was right.
Written language did fundamentally change our brains.
But it's also one of the cornerstones of everything
modern civilization has accomplished.
One of the defining characteristics of being human
is that this is not the boundary of my body,
and this is not the boundary of my mind.
And, as always, thanks for watching.
[theme music playing]