• CNN.com, Wednesday, October 15, 2008 1:01 PM

A study at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) measured brain activity of older adults as they searched the Web to see if Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and others can make you smarter. Dr Gary Small, a professor at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA., recruited two groups of people. One had minimal computer experience, while the other had lots.

Twenty-four people were divided into the two groups, similar in sex, educational achievements and age, ranging from ages 55 to 78. Their only difference was their technological experience.

It turns out members of the technologically advanced group had more than twice the neural activation while searching online, compared with their less experienced counterparts. Activity occurred in the region of the brain that controls decision-making and complex reasoning, according to Small's study, which appears in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.

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