Dr. Mark D'Esposito

Right, where you had to really figure out, you know, you had to go to a certain place and you had to either look at the map or stop at a gas station and ask.

These skills were something that you learned and you developed and it was problem solving.

And that's all gone now.

I mean, I wonder even if sometimes if people even know the direction they're going, whether it's west, north, or what town they're in because they're just following the directions.

So we'll see.

I just can't imagine that...

that learned skill is not going to be detrimental to us at some point and generalize in a bad way, right?

As opposed to a good way.

So yeah, it does definitely worry me.

But like you said, there's nothing on the phone that helps you plan a podcast, nothing that helps me in the emergency room, nothing helps a professor when he's giving a lecture.

So I agree with you that the sort of having your head buried in a cell phone, I'm not

Yeah.

I don't see it being healthy for your frontal lobes.

Yeah, I mean, working memory, it's interesting.

I started studying it about 30 years ago, and I don't think I realized how important it was when I started.

But what we mean by working memory is this ability to hold information in mind when it's no longer accessible to us.

So if you tell me your telephone number and I have to put it into my phone, you know, it's no longer there.

You just told me, but I'll hold it in my working memory until I can

punch it into my phone.

It doesn't have to be something that comes from the outside world.