Television addicts may be driven demented by the goggle box, according to an Israeli researcher. Excessive viewing may increase your chances of developing Alzheimer's disease in later life, says Moshe Aronson of the Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel-Aviv University.
In the current edition of Medical Hypotheses, Aronson argues that television places unique psychological strains on the brain. TV viewers are bombarded with a relentless succession of sights and sounds with little chance of relating to what they have experienced. Commercials compound this passivity by 'obliterating any serious human emotion experienced in connection with the foregoing stimuli', says Aronson.
Reading, by contrast, gives individuals a chance to pause and reflect on what they have read. Even listening to the radio is preferable to watching television, Aronson considers, because the wireless bombards its audience with fewer sensory stimuli. It is television's drive for variety and novelty, its 'trivia inextricably mixed with more serious matters', that is so psychologically damaging, he claims. No other cultural occupation past or present comes near it.
The stressful nature of much of television news and drama adds to the danger, claims Aronson, as the passive viewer is unable to release the tension built up by watching sex and violence. At high levels, stress hormones are known to be capable of damaging nerve cells in a part of the brain - the hippocampus - crucial to the memory, and this region is also damaged in Alzheimer's disease.
To test his theory, Aronson urges doctors to record the TV-viewing habits of patients with suspected dementia. Already, there are faint signs that those who eschew the box may safeguard their brains: dementia among Talmudic scholars in Israel is extremely rare, Aronson reports
In the current edition of Medical Hypotheses, Aronson argues that television places unique psychological strains on the brain. TV viewers are bombarded with a relentless succession of sights and sounds with little chance of relating to what they have experienced. Commercials compound this passivity by 'obliterating any serious human emotion experienced in connection with the foregoing stimuli', says Aronson.
Reading, by contrast, gives individuals a chance to pause and reflect on what they have read. Even listening to the radio is preferable to watching television, Aronson considers, because the wireless bombards its audience with fewer sensory stimuli. It is television's drive for variety and novelty, its 'trivia inextricably mixed with more serious matters', that is so psychologically damaging, he claims. No other cultural occupation past or present comes near it.
The stressful nature of much of television news and drama adds to the danger, claims Aronson, as the passive viewer is unable to release the tension built up by watching sex and violence. At high levels, stress hormones are known to be capable of damaging nerve cells in a part of the brain - the hippocampus - crucial to the memory, and this region is also damaged in Alzheimer's disease.
To test his theory, Aronson urges doctors to record the TV-viewing habits of patients with suspected dementia. Already, there are faint signs that those who eschew the box may safeguard their brains: dementia among Talmudic scholars in Israel is extremely rare, Aronson reports
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