"Screen culture" may be changing our brains?

Watching the 7.30 Report on the ABC tonight, I came across a lady by the name of Baroness Professor Susan Greenfield. She is an Professor from the UK over here doing talks to drum up funding for research in her area of expertise, being Neuroscience, or studying the human brain.

Here is a link to the story on the 7:30 Report website.

One thing I found interesting was her comparison of computer gaming, to reading a book. She explains that during the process of reading a book, you become very closely involved with the characters within the book, that there's apparently long-term emotional attachment with those characters. She says that the same doesn't occur in the setting of a computer game. You 'save the princess' and then the game ends, and that is it.

One question that comes to mind from that comparison is: what happens when you close the book, when you finish reading it and place it back on the book shelf? I would suggest, the same thing that occurs when you finish a game.

On the flip side of her coin, I would also ask whether she has taken into account the more persistent games out there e.g. World of Warcraft, and the like. You are very much attached to that game, and the characters you create within them, and the journey you embark on with other players within the game.

I would argue that, fundamentally, she is correct. I think "screen culture" (such a generic phrase) is changing our brains. But perhaps, it is just that: change. Perhaps, and a scientist of here stature of all people should be the one arguing this, such new mediums and methods of interaction inevitably lead to changes in the ways we think about things.

It is oh so common these days for people of older generations to at best, lament, and at worst sound a 'call to arms' over the dangers of the changes PCs, the Internet, and software are bringing about.

Perhaps, though, my brain has changed so much that I just don't get it.