Brains

Milton Glaser, designer of that amazing Bob Dylan poster with the big colorful hair (and perhaps less to his credit the over-copied I Love New York logo with the heart) says in his “Ten Thing I Have Learned” speech: “How you live changes your brain.” He talks about how doing certain things and thinking certain things actually causes your brain to be built up and organized in certain physical ways that determine how you are able to perceive things in the future. So what does it do to our brains to spend hours in front of these computer terminal screens interacting with other computers elsewhere and only occasionally, via our keyboards, with other people? What does it do to our brains to sit hours passively in front of a television screen? What does it do to our brains, I have for years as a parent wondered, to sit playing at pretend killing over and over and over again in electronic video games? And what does it do to our brains to spend time outdoors in natural areas hearing and smelling and touching and tasting and seeing natural things? Are we making the best choices about how to spend our time? Are our brains as ‘good’ as they could be?