by Dr. Julie Radlauer-Doerfler and Spence Abel

Have you ever heard the expression, “Use it or lose it”?

Nowhere does this idiom apply more than to the brain. Sure, the brain isn’t a muscle, but to keep it sharp, it still needs consistent neural exercise. Whether we know it or not, we exercise our brains on a daily basis. We do so when we go for walks, cook dinner, chat with friends, and, of course, while at work and school.

But times are changing.

Back in the day, if we wanted to get just about anything done, we had to rely on our entire mental faculty to do so. Today, many of us are resorting to shortcuts. Instead of relying on our own intelligence, we use artificial intelligence to do the brainwork for us.

A new MIT study put that question to the test when it examined the minds of 54 participants ages 18-39. Participants were split into three groups and asked to write a series of essays while hooked up to an EEG that measured brain activity across 32 regions. One group could use ChatGPT, another Google, and the last had the........

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