Imagination: exercise for the brain

How does the use of screens impact our brains? That question was addressed by Wayne Warburton, Macquarie University Professor of Developmental Psychology, at a recent talk I attended.

He said scans taken of an adult’s brain, someone addicted to alcohol or gambling, were similar to the brain of an adolescent with a screen addiction. In both cases, the frontal lobe, responsible for higher functions such as future planning and behaviour control, were less developed.

“The brain is a ‘use it or lose it’ organ,” he warned. And with screen addictions, there was very little activity and a loss of grey matter in the frontal lobe.

While his work is mainly focused on adolescents, with around 100,000 young people affected by screen addiction, the signs of reduced concentration among adults is increasingly evident. How often have your heard friends, family, neighbours or colleagues report they have difficulties reading a book for any length of time or watching a film without interruption?

How about you? Do you watch TV and check your phone at the same time? Most likely, we all do as our reliance on technology increases over time.

Which returns me to my focus on imagination; when we imagine, our whole brain is active.

Imagination invites us to be active players in discovering where our dreams might lead; it is a recognised pathway to developing higher order skills, those much-needed functions such as problem solving, decision making and critical thinking.

Imagination is one way to invest in ‘using it’ rather than ‘losing it’ to grow our brain power.