The Internet can alter specific brain regions and affect our attention capacity, memory processes and social interaction, a study has found. The research, published in the journal World Psychiatry, showed that the Internet can produce both acute and sustained alterations in specific areas of cognition.

Researchers, including those from Oxford University in the U.K. and Harvard University in the U.S., investigated hypotheses on how the Internet may alter cognitive processes.

“The key findings of this report are that high-levels of Internet use could indeed have an impact on many functions of the brain,” said Joseph Firth, Senior Research Fellow at the Western Sydney University in Australia. The limitless stream of prompts and notifications from the Internet divides attention, which, in turn, may decrease the capacity to concentrate on a single task, said Mr. Firth, who led the study

“Given we now have most of the world’s factual information literally at our fingertips, this appears to have the potential to begin changing the ways in which we store, and even value, facts and knowledge in society, and in the brain,” he added.