another way of saying, brain drain
Modern technology is changing the way our brains work, says neuroscientist. By SUSAN GREENFIELD. Human identity, the idea that defines each and every one of us, could be facing an unprecedented crisis. It is a crisis that would threaten long-held notions of who we are, what we do and how we behave. It goes right to the heart-or the head-of us all. Human capital flight, sometimes called brain drain, refers to the emigration of intelligent, well-educated individuals for better pay or conditions, causing their places of origin to lose skilled people, or brains.. adj. ruined, wrecked. 1  all washed up. 2  belly-up. 3  burned out. 4  cooked. 5  dead. 6  destroyed. 7  done for. 8  down and out. 9  down for the count. 10  down the drain. 11  down the tubes. 12  finished. 13  floored. 14  had it. 15  nonfunctioning. 16  on the skids. 17  out of business. 18  out of circulation. 19  sunk. 20  totaled. 21  washed up. 22  wiped out. Brain drain phenomena in Europe fall into two distinct trends. The first is an outflow of highly qualified scientists from ' Western Europe ' mostly to the United States. The second is a migration of skilled workers from ' Central ' and ' Southeastern Europe ' into 'Western Europe', within the EU. Brain drain is still an issue in some Atlantic provinces such as New Brunswick, where a relative lack of jobs results in some of the highly educated moving to other provinces such as Ontario, Alberta, or British Columbia. Brain gain also occurs here, however, through immigration. A brain drain is effectively an export of human resources such as “education services”, which has inadvertently “become a money machine for countries such as the US, contributing over $7 billion to the US economy”. Our brains are under the influence of an ever-expanding world of new technology: multichannel television, video games, MP3 players, the internet, wireless networks, Bluetooth links-the list goes on and on. The surrounding environment has a huge impact both on the way our brains develop and how that brain is transformed into a unique human mind. Of course, there's nothing new about that: human brains have been changing, adapting and developing in response to outside stimuli for centuries. The remittance economy is a significant part of the brain drain as well an integral source of income for developed economies: “2011 remittances were estimated at $372bn”, and for countries such as Mexico and the Philippines were worth “$24 and $34 billion” respectively. But our modern brains are also having to adapt to other 21st century intrusions, some of which, such as prescribed drugs like Ritalin and Prozac, are supposed to be of benefit, and some of which, such as widelyavailable illegal drugs like cannabis and heroin, are not.
Human capital flight