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REVIEW article

Front. Hum. Dyn.
Sec. Digital Impacts
Volume 6 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fhumd.2024.1475438
This article is part of the Research Topic Ethical Dilemmas of Digitalisation of Mental Health View all 3 articles

The Brain Digitalization: it's all happening so fast!

Provisionally accepted
Laura-Joy Boulos Laura-Joy Boulos *
  • Saint Joseph University, Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The use of tech in mental health has drastically increased in the recent years. Indeed advances in technology have made it possible to better characterize, predict, prevent, and treat a range of psychiatric illnesses. What is less paid attention to however is the impact of tech on our mental health and brain functioning, or what we have called, the digitalization of our brains. The acceleration of tech is correlated with an increased prevalence of reported mental health disorders. The overuse of technology and social media is also correlated to cognitive and affective alterations in apparently healthy individuals, including increased feelings of isolation, stress, memory and attention deficits, as well as modifications in information and reward processing. In this review we discuss the impact of technology on our mental health and brains, emphasizing on the need to take into account our brain capacities in order to optimize the integration of tech in our daily lives all while preserving our core cognitive functions.

    Keywords: Brain digitalization, Brain health, Cognition, artificial intelligence, Internet

    Received: 03 Aug 2024; Accepted: 28 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Boulos. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Laura-Joy Boulos, Saint Joseph University, Beirut, 1104-2020, Beirut, Lebanon

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.