and it talks about how the radiant light from computer / TV screens entrain our brains to certain frequencies. Here's a quote
Can anyone confirm how true this is? Or how important it is; he doesn't mention the affect it has on the adult brain, but I've read similar accounts from different resources. I'm on the computer reading constantly, and do feel quite addicted to it. I would like to eliminate it, but it's such a valuable resource of information; the wai diet is just one of many things I would have never learned about without the internet. I'm also wondering if I could put some sort of thin paper in front of my monitor to disable the radiant light - if this would have any affect or be a wasted effort."Television literally prevents neural growth in the developing brains of children. When young children watch too much, it suppresses the capacity of their brains to create an internal image of some thing, or some one, or some event not presented to the sensory system by the environment, which is the essence of what we call "imagination." Researchers used to think that it was only the content of the programming that was negatively affecting children. Now we have ample evidence that the technology of the device is very harmful in and of itself. In other words, the simple act of watching television has profoundly negative effects on the physiology of human beings.
It's a long story, dating all the way back to the early 1960's when it was discovered that kids' minds go catatonic in front to the "tube." This has to do with the way that the brain reacts to radiant light, which is the light source of television and computer monitors, and reflected light, which is what brings us the rest of our visual experience. This is too complicated to go all the way into here, so let me just say that the brain tends to close down in response to radiant light sources. We've all seen how hypnotized children get when they watch television for any length of time.
My biggest concern has to do with the way the television industry countered this effect by introducing what are known as "startle effects" into children's programming. A startle effect is anything that triggers the brain into thinking that there might be an emergency out there and alerts it to pay special attention to the source of the disturbance.
Television accomplishes this with sudden and dramatic changes of intensity of light or sound and a rapid shifting of camera angles. Eventually, however, the brain starts habituating itself to the situation, realizing that these are just false alarms, and it starts to tune out again. As a result, every ten years or so the television industry has had to up the ante by making the startles bigger and bigger, until finally what we have are periodic bursts of violent imagery in children's cartoons and so on, to the point now where there are an average of sixteen bits of violence every half-hour. Here the nature of the program content does matter. While the higher brain, or neocortex, knows that the images on TV aren't real, the lower, or the "reptilian" brain does not. This means that when a child views violence on television, the reptilian brain sends a series of alarm messages up to the emotional brain, which in turn immediately contacts the heart. The moment the heart receives any indication of negativity or danger, it drops out of its usual harmonic mode into an incoherent one, triggering the release of the single most potent hormone in the human body, known as cortisol. Cortisol instantly wakes up the brain and causes it to produce trillions of neural links in order to ready the individual to face the emergency."
But mostly I just want to know how serious the affect is; I consider my mind extremely valuable and if the computer is having a serious negative affect on it I would rather go without the computer.
