By MATT RICHTEL

GLEN CANYON NATIONAL
RECREATION AREA, UTAH


TODD BRAVER EMERGES from a tent. For the first time in three days, Mr. Braver is not wearing his watch. “I forgot,” he says.

It is a small thing, the kind of change many vacationers notice in themselves as they unwind and lose track of time. But for Mr. Braver and his companions, these moments lead to a question: What is happening to our brains?

Mr. Braver, a psychology professor at Washington University in St. Louis, was one of five neuroscientists on an unusual journey. They spent a week in late May in this remote area of southern Utah, rafting the San Juan River, camping and hiking.

It was a primitive trip with a sophisticated goal: to understand how heavy use of digital devices and other technology changes how we think and behave, and how a retreat into nature might reverse those effects.

Some of the scientists say a vacation like this hardly warrants much scrutiny. But the trip’s organizer, David Strayer, a psychology professor at the University of Utah, says that studying what happens when we step away from our devices and rest our brains ? in particular, how attention, memory and learning are affected ? is important science.

“Attention is the holy grail,” Mr. Strayer says. “Everything that you’re conscious of, everything you let in, everything you remember and you forget, depends on it.’’

Mr. Strayer says that understanding how attention works could help in the treatment of a host of maladies, like attention deficit disorder, schizophrenia and depression. And he says that on a day-to-day basis, too much digital stimulation can “take people who would be functioning O.K. and put them in a rangewhere they’re not psychologically healthy.”

The quest to understand the impact on the brain of heavy technology use is still in its early stages. To Mr. Strayer, it is no less significant than when scientists investigated the effects of consuming too much meat or alcohol.

Mr. Strayer and Paul Atchley, 40, a professor at the University of Kansas who studies teenagers’ compulsive use of cellphones, argue that heavy technology use can inhibit deep thought and cause anxiety, and that getting out into nature can help.

The other men are skeptical. Mr. Braver, 41, a brain imaging expert; Steven Yantis, 54, the chairman of the psychological and brain sciences department at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, who studies how people switch between tasks; and Art Kramer, 57, a professor at the University of Illinois who has studied the neurological benefits of exercise.

The modern study of attention has become an important area of research. The believers say the incoming data has created a false sense of urgency that can affect people’s ability to focus.

But Mr. Kramer disagrees. “As academics, we live on computers,” he says.

On the river, the skeptics talk about how to study the toll taken by constant interruption from e-mail and other digital bursts.

Studies have shown that performance suffers when people multitask. These researchers wonder whether attention and focus can suffer when people merely anticipate the arrival of more digital stimulation. “The expectation of e-mail seems to be taking up our working memory,” Mr. Yantis says.

Working memory is a precious resource in the brain.

“To the extent you have less working memory, you have less space for storing and integrating ideas and therefore less to do the reasoning you need to do,” says Mr. Kramer.

Over the next few days, the group discusses ways to measure the release of brain chemicals into the bloodstream. A pair talks about how to apply neuroeconomics - measuring how the brain values information - to understand compulsive texting .

Mr. Strayer says the travelers are experiencing a stage of relaxation he calls “third-day syndrome,” and even the more skeptical of the scientists say something is happening to their brains that reinforces their scientific discussions - something that could be important to help people cope in a world of constant electronic noise.

“If we can find out that people are walking around fatigued and not realizing their cognitive potential,” Mr. Braver says, then adds: “What can we do to get us back to our full potential?”

Even without knowing how the trip affected their brains, the scientists are prepared to recommend a little downtime as a path to uncluttered thinking. As they near the end of their journey, Mr. Kramer mentions a personal discovery: “I have a colleague who says that I’m being very impolite when I pull out a computer during meetings. I say: ‘I can listen.’

“Maybe I’m not listening so well. Maybe I can work at being more engaged.”


PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHANG W. LEE/THE NEW YORK TIMES
As digital devices make multitasking all-pervasive, the study of attention spans has grown. Todd Braver and Art Kramer, below, neuroscientists at leisure.