Life in the digital world may cause "popcorn brain," study says

While the spread of information and communication ushered in by the internet age is mostly hailed as a marvelous breakthrough, it's not without its drawbacks.

Never before has so much information been so easy to access, and never before has it been so easy to do so many things at once. The consequences? Divided attention, information overload, and a rising nation of "popcorn brains," too easily lost in a sea of constant distractions.

And now recent research out of China suggests that using the internet may actually cause physical "structural alterations" of the brain.

A team of Chinese researchers conducted MRI tests on two groups of students, those who spent roughly ten hours a day online and those who spent only two. The brains of the students who spent more time online exhibited less gray matter, the actual thought and emotion-processing parts of the human mind.

The study, which appears in the online science journal PLos ONE, was also picked up by CNN Health, which adds lots of sad anecdotes about popcorn-brained people neglecting their "real" lives.

The full study is available here.