Taking notes on a sheet stimulates the brain more than on a screen

With the Covid-19 pandemic, many students took their course online via from power point and courses in videoconference. But, already before, the computers had gradually replaced the notebooks in the amphitheatres and many of us have swapped the paper diary and the notepad for their digital version. A recent habit on the scale of humanity to which our brain has yet to acclimatize. Indeed, Japanese researchers from the University of Tokyo have demonstrated in a series of experiments published in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience that paper and pen are still the best way to take notes and keep them in memory, compared to tablets and to smartphones.

Paper challenges tablets and smartphones

48 volunteers aged 18 to 29, all members of the University of Tokyo, have undergone several scientific experiments to assess their ability to remember a schedule when it is written on a calendar. paper, smartphone or tablet. After reading a dialogue between several characters, the participants had to write down the timetable on the calendar, the tablet and the smartphone.

Already at this stage, scientists have observed a significant difference between the paper medium and the mediums digital. People using a notebook took less time, about 11 minutes to complete the calendar, than those on smartphones (16 minutes) and tablets (14 minutes).

Then, the participants waited one hour during which they performed a secondary task, a source ofinterference. At the end of this hour, they had to remember the schedule of the characters by answering a MCQ of 16 questions of varying difficulty (four choices per answer). After each question, they indicated their level of confidence in their answer. This recall task was done while the scientists observed their brain activate with a Functional MRI.

Paper makes the brain shine

For all participants, remembering the calendar activated the same parts of the brain : I’seahorse, the precuneus, the visual cortex, and the regions of the frontal lobe involved in language. But the activity of these brain regions is more intense in notebook users than in tablet and smartphone users.

For the scientists, this suggests that the use of the notebook and the pen stimulates the brain with the information to be retained but also spatio-temporal information which can facilitate the process of memory.

Further research is needed to investigate the long-term effects on brain activation to digital devices, especially in learning.