hpr4476 :: Does AI cause brain damage?
Going through the findings of an MIT study about how AI will make your brain rot away (or will it?)
Hosted by Trollercoaster on Monday, 2025-09-29 is flagged as Explicit and is released under a CC-BY-SA license.
AI, llm, brain rot.
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Quick-Glance Summary
- I walk you through an MIT experiment where 54 EEG-capped volunteers wrote essays three ways: pure brainpower, classic search, and ChatGPT assistance.
- Brain-only writers lit up the most neurons and produced the freshest prose; the ChatGPT crowd churned out near-identical essays, remembered little, and racked up what the researchers dub cognitive debt : the interest you pay later for outsourcing thought today.
- A bonus “switch” round yanked AI away from the LLM devotees (cue face-plant) and finally let the brain-first team play with the toy (they coped fine), proving skills first, tools second.
- I spiced the tale with calculator nostalgia, a Belgian med-exam cheating fiasco, and Professor Felienne’s forklift-in-the-gym metaphor to land one mantra: *scaffolds beat shortcuts*.
- We peeked at tech “enshittification” once investors demand returns, whispered “open-source” as the escape hatch, and I dared you to try a two-day test—outline solo, draft with AI, revise solo, then check what you still remember.
- Net takeaway: keep AI on a leash; let thinking drive, tools navigate .
- If you think I’m full of digital hot air, record your own rebuttal and prove it.
Resources
MIT study
- MIT Media Lab. (2025). Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt. https://www.media.mit.edu/publications/your-brain-on-chatgpt/
Long term consequences
(to be honest - pulled these from another list, didn't check all of them)
- Clemente-Suárez, V. J., Beltrán-Velasco, A. I., Herrero-Roldán, S., Rodriguez-Besteiro, S., Martínez-Guardado, I., Martín-Rodríguez, A., & Tornero-Aguilera, J. F. (2024). Digital device usage and childhood cognitive development: Exploring effects on cognitive abilities. Children , 11(11), 1299. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11592547/
- Grinschgl, S., Papenmeier, F., & Meyerhoff, H. S. (2021). Consequences of cognitive offloading: Boosting performance but diminishing memory. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology , 74(9), 1477–1496. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8358584/
- Ward, A. F., Duke, K., Gneezy, A., & Bos, M. W. (2017). Brain drain: The mere presence of one's own smartphone reduces available cognitive capacity. Journal of the Association for Consumer Research , 2(2), 140–154. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/691462
- Zhang, M., Zhang, X., Wang, H., & Yu, L. (2024). Understanding the influence of digital technology on cognitive development in children. Current Research in Behavioral Sciences , 5, 100224. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266724212400099X
- Risko, E. F., & Dunn, T. L. (2020). Developmental origins of cognitive offloading. Developmental Review , 57, 100921. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32517613/
- Ladouceur, R. (2022). Cognitive effects of prolonged continuous human-machine interactions: Implications for digital device users. Behavioral Sciences , 12(8), 240. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10790890/
- Wong, M. Y., Yin, Z., Kwan, S. C., & Chua, S. E. (2024). Understanding digital dementia and cognitive impact in children and adolescents. Neuroscience Bulletin , 40(7), 628–635. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11499077/
- Baxter, B. (2025, February 2). Designing AI for human expertise: Preventing cognitive shortcuts. UXmatters . https://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2025/02/designing-ai-for-human-expertise-preventing-cognitive-shortcuts.php
- Tristan, C., & Thomas, M. (2024). The brain digitalization: It's all happening so fast! Frontiers in Human Dynamics , 4, 1475438. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-dynamics/articles/10.3389/fhumd.2024.1475438/full
- Sun, Z., & Wang, Y. (2024). Two distinct neural pathways for mechanical versus digital memory aids. NeuroImage , 121, 117245. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811924004683
- Ahmed, S. (2025). Demystifying the new dilemma of brain rot in the digital era. Contemporary Neurology , 19(3), 241–254. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11939997/
- Redshaw, J., & Adlam, A. (2020). The nature and development of cognitive offloading in children. Child Development Perspectives , 14(2), 120–126. https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cdep.12532
- Geneva Internet Platform. (2025, June 3). Cognitive offloading and the future of the mind in the AI age. https://dig.watch/updates/cognitive-offloading-and-the-future-of-the-mind-in-the-ai-age
- Karlsson, G. (2019). Reducing cognitive load on the working memory by externalizing information. DIVA Portal . http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1327786/FULLTEXT02.pdf
- Monitask. (2025). What is cognitive offloading? https://www.monitask.com/en/business-glossary/cognitive-offloading
- Sharma, A., & Watson, S. (2024). Human technology intermediation to reduce cognitive load. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association , 31(4), 832–841. https://academic.oup.com/jamia/article/31/4/832/7595629
- Morgan, P. L., & Risko, E. F. (2021). Re-examining cognitive load measures in real-world learning environments. British Journal of Educational Psychology , 91(3), 993–1013. https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjep.12729
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