Zachary DeCosta
Paper 1
Tuesday/Thursday 8am
9/4/14
Richard Restak In the excerpt from Richard Restak, he talked about how the plasticity of our brain is changing the way we do things toay. The human brain is changing everyday and there is no way anyone can stop it. Richard Restak, an expert on the brain, talks about how the plasticity of our brains is changing constantly. He believes that this change is negatively hindering our ability to focus and produce a single task. The rewiring of our brains is forcing us as humans to make many changes to our everyday lives, and the main change it is causing us is that in order to function we need to multitask. Multitasking is the new thing today; everyone wants to be able to do as many things as …show more content…

Because the plasticity of our brains is changing to adapt and contract ADD or ADHD which we are beginning to need to function, people don’t want to listen to someone talk for more than a short period of time. This change to the plasticity of our brain is negatively affecting our ability to connect with people. All people want to hear, is the summary or shortened version of what someone was originally going to say, they want answers now. People want the shortened version because we are being forced to take in so much information at once, leading to the changing in our brains. Restak says, “Our brain is being forced to manage increasing amounts of information within shorter and shorter time intervals” (416). This is why we have “no time to listen”. Not having time to listen, also devalues relationships. An example of this would be the anecdote Restak talks about. Where the subway driver unfortunately watch a man commit suicide by throwing himself in front of her train. He goes on to talk about how she needed help, and wanted to talk about the incident. Restak says, “no one would give her more than a few minutes to tell her story. They either interrupted her or in her words, “gradually zoned out.”” This makes the value in relationships decrease because people know that in order for someone to listen to them, what they are saying must be short. It almost makes them not want to talk to people. This change to our brains is shortening our attention span and