Hmmm … check out this study reported in Newsweek:

Is technology changing our brains? A new study by UCLA neuroscientist Gary Small adds to a growing body of research that says it is. And according to Small’s new book, “iBRAIN: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind,” a dramatic shift in how we gather information and communicate with one another has touched off an era of rapid evolution that may ultimately change the human brain as we know it. “Perhaps not since early man first discovered how to use a tool has the human brain been affected so quickly and so dramatically,” he writes. “As the brain evolves and shifts its focus towards new technological skills, it drifts away from fundamental social skills.”

The impact of technology on our circuitry should not come as a surprise. The brain’s plasticity—it’s ability to change in response to different stimuli—is well known. Professional musicians have more gray matter in brain regions responsible for planning finger movements. And athletes’ brains are bulkier in areas that control hand-eye coordination. That’s because the more time you devote to a specific activity, the stronger the neural pathways responsible for executing that activity become. So it makes sense that people who process a constant stream of digital information would have more neurons dedicated to filtering that information. Still, that’s not the same thing as evolution.

To see how the Internet might be rewiring us, Small and colleagues monitored the brains of 24 adults as they performed a simulated Web search, and again as they read a page of text. During the Web search, those who reported using the Internet regularly in their everyday lives showed twice as much signaling in brain regions responsible for decision-making and complex reasoning, compared with those who had limited Internet exposure. The findings, to be published in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, suggest that Internet use enhances the brain’s capacity to be stimulated, and that Internet reading activates more brain regions than printed words. The research adds to previous studies that have shown that the tech-savvy among us possess greater working memory (meaning they can store and retrieve more bits of information in the short term), are more adept at perceptual learning (that is, adjusting their perception of the world in response to changing information), and have better motor skills.

Really? So it’s OK to stay up all night reading The Librarian’s Guide to Etiquette? It’s actually making my brain smarter and not just snarkier? To quote my students, “SWEET!”

Are you a Reading First school? Do you like it? The New York Times highlights a Congressional report stating that the $1 billion Reading First program is ineffective:

President Bush’s $1 billion a year initiative to teach reading to low-income children has not helped improve their reading comprehension, according to a Department of Education report released on Thursday.

The program, known as Reading First, drew on some of Mr. Bush’s educational experiences as Texas governor, and at his insistence, Congress included it in the federal No Child Left Behind law that passed by bipartisan majorities in 2001. It has been a subject of dispute almost ever since, however, with the Bush Administration and some state officials characterizing the program as beneficial for young students, even after federal investigators found extensive conflicts of interest among its top advisers.

“Reading First did not improve students’ reading comprehension,” concluded the report, which was mandated by Congress and carried out by the Department of Education’s research arm, the Institute of Education Sciences. “The program did not increase the percentages of students in grades one, two or three whose reading comprehension scores were at or above grade level.”

The 211-page study, “Reading First Impact Study: Interim Report,” analyzes the performance of students in 12 states who were in grades one to three during the 2004-05 and 2005-06 school years. It is to be followed early in 2009 with a final report that will analyze additional data, the institute’s director, Grover Whitehurst said.

A few posts ago, I mentioned the latest Pew Internet and American Life study. I found it interesting that the Yahoo/Reuters article and my own reading of the executive summary different. Today’s New York Times summary of the study extracts still different information: that those who have the fastest Internet access use libraries most. What do we make of a study that is summarized differently by so many?

And just in case you’re yearning to read more, here’s the Washington Post’s summary.