Book review: The Overflowing Brain

July 2, 4:31 PMDallas Business Commentary ExaminerRobert Morris

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The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limits of Working Memory

Torkel Klingberg

Oxford University Press (2008)

In his introductory first chapter, Klingberg proposes that, in addition to determining how to learn to be less stressed by decelerating the pace of our lifestyle, we must also accommodate “our thirst for information, stimulation, and mental challenges. It is arguably when we determine our limits and find an optimal balance between cognitive demand and ability that we can not only achieve deep satisfaction but also develop our brain’s capacity the most.” Klingberg stresses the need to achieve and then maintain what Jonah Lehrer characterizes as "perfect equilibrium” in his recently published How We Decide. First, in Chapter 2, Klingberg examines the mental demands that surround us every day and compete for our attention, “through which the information flood re4aches the brain.” (These mental demands comprise what marketers correctly call the “clutter” that they struggle to penetrate with their messages.) At one point, Klingberg cites an experiment that demonstrates “one of the rudimentary mechanisms of attention: the selection of neurons to be begin italics] biased competition.”

There are several reasons why I think so highly of this book. Here are two. First, Klingberg brilliantly and (yes) patiently explains for non-scholars such as I (a) how and why our brains overflow with an increasingly greater number of “messages” from an increasingly greater number of information sources (e.g. other persons, electronic and print media, The Web, telephones, billboard),  (b) how and why at least some of it is retained by working and long-term memory capabilities, and (c) what we must do to achieve and then maintain a balance of working load with working memory capacity, if not the “perfect equilibrium” to which Lehrer refers. “If we analyze the situation through the lens of the concept of working memory, we find that your feelings are matched by something quantifiable: the simultaneous inflow of two streams of information is extremely demanding on working memory.” Moreoever, the complexities and consequent difficulties of this inundation are exacerbated by the fact there is a constant updating, revision, and even replacement of the information we have retained. That is why Klingberg suggests, “we must always be aware of the limited scope we have for receiving information.” Choices, sometimes very difficult choices must be made…frequently when there is a crisis. The safe landing of U.S. Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River on January 15th offers an excellent case in point. Captain Chesley ("Sully") Sullenberger working memory of procedures enabled him to process and then respond to the information provided by the computers aboard the Airbus A320.