Latest news with #brainactivity
Telegraph
4 days ago
- Science
- Telegraph
Using AI makes you stupid, researchers find
Artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots risk making people less intelligent by hampering the development of critical thinking, memory and language skills, research has found. A study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) found that people who relied on ChatGPT to write essays had lower brain activity than those who used their brain alone. The group who used AI also performed worse than the 'brain-only' participants in a series of tests. Those who had used AI also struggled when asked to perform tasks without it. 'Reliance on AI systems can lead to a passive approach and diminished activation of critical thinking skills when the person later performs tasks alone,' the paper said. Researchers warned that the findings raised 'concerns about the long-term educational implications' of using AI both in schools and in the workplace. It adds to a growing body of work that suggest people's brains switch-off when they use AI. 'Human thinking offloaded' The MIT study monitored 54 people who were asked to write four essays. Participants were divided into three groups. One wrote essays with the help of ChatGPT, another used internet search engines to conduct research and the third relied solely on brainpower. Researchers then asked them questions about their essays while performing so-called electroencephalogram (EEG) scans that measured activity in their brains. Those who relied on ChatGPT, a so-called 'large language model' that can answer complicated questions in plain English, 'performed worse than their counterparts in the brain-only group at all levels: neural, linguistic, scoring', the researchers said. The EEG scans found that 'brain connectivity systematically scaled down with the amount of external support' and was weakest in those who were relying on AI chatbots to help them write essays. The readings in particular showed reduced 'theta' brainwaves, which are associated with learning and memory formation, in those using chatbots. 'Essentially, some of the 'human thinking' and planning was offloaded,' the study said. The impact of AI contrasted with the use of search engines, which had relatively little effect on results. Of those who has used the chatbot, 83pc failed to provide a single correct quote from their essays – compared to around 10pc in those who used a search engine or their own brainpower. Participants who relied on chatbots were able to recall very little information about their essays, suggesting either they had not engaged with the material or had failed to remember it. Those using search engines showed only slightly lower levels of brain engagement compared to those writing without any technical aides and similar levels of recall. Impact on 'cognitive muscles' The findings will fuel concerns that AI chatbots are causing lasting damage to our brains. A study by Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon, published in February, found that workers reported lower levels of critical thinking when relying on AI. The authors warned that overuse of AI could leave cognitive muscles 'atrophied and unprepared' for when they are needed. Nataliya Kosmyna, the lead researcher on the MIT study, said the findings demonstrated the 'pressing matter of a likely decrease in learning skills' in those using AI tools when learning or at work. While the AI-assisted group was allowed to use a chatbot in their first three essays, in their final session they were asked to rely solely on their brains. The group continued to show lower memory and critical thinking skills, which the researchers said highlighted concerns that 'frequent AI tool users often bypass deeper engagement with material, leading to 'skill atrophy' in tasks like brainstorming and problem-solving'. The essays written with the help of ChatGPT were also found to be homogenous, repeating similar themes and language. Researchers said AI chatbots could increase 'cognitive debt' in students and lead to 'long-term costs, such as diminished critical inquiry, increased vulnerability to manipulation, decreased creativity'. Teachers have been sounding the alarm that pupils routinely cheating on tests and essays using AI chatbots. A survey by the Higher Education Policy Institute in February found 88pc of UK students were using AI chatbots to help with assessments and learning and that 18pc had directly plagiarised AI text into their work.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Using AI makes you stupid, researchers find
Artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots risk making people less intelligent by hampering the development of critical thinking, memory and language skills, research has found. A study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) found that people who relied on ChatGPT to write essays had lower brain activity than those who used their brain alone. The group who used AI also performed worse than the 'brain-only' participants in a series of tests. Those who had used AI also struggled when asked to perform tasks without it. 'Reliance on AI systems can lead to a passive approach and diminished activation of critical thinking skills when the person later performs tasks alone,' the paper said. Researchers warned that the findings raised 'concerns about the long-term educational implications' of using AI both in schools and in the workplace. It adds to a growing body of work that suggest people's brains switch-off when they use AI. The MIT study monitored 54 people who were asked to write four essays. Participants were divided into three groups. One wrote essays with the help of ChatGPT, another used internet search engines to conduct research and the third relied solely on brainpower. Researchers then asked them questions about their essays while performing so-called electroencephalogram (EEG) scans that measured activity in their brains. Those who relied on ChatGPT, a so-called 'large language model' that can answer complicated questions in plain English, 'performed worse than their counterparts in the brain-only group at all levels: neural, linguistic, scoring', the researchers said. The EEG scans found that 'brain connectivity systematically scaled down with the amount of external support' and was weakest in those who were relying on AI chatbots to help them write essays. The readings in particular showed reduced 'theta' brainwaves, which are associated with learning and memory formation, in those using chatbots. 'Essentially, some of the 'human thinking' and planning was offloaded,' the study said. The impact of AI contrasted with the use of search engines, which had relatively little effect on results. Of those who has used the chatbot, 83pc failed to provide a single correct quote from their essays – compared to around 10pc in those who used a search engine or their own brainpower. Participants who relied on chatbots were able to recall very little information about their essays, suggesting either they had not engaged with the material or had failed to remember it. Those using search engines showed only slightly lower levels of brain engagement compared to those writing without any technical aides and similar levels of recall. The findings will fuel concerns that AI chatbots are causing lasting damage to our brains. A study by Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon, published in February, found that workers reported lower levels of critical thinking when relying on AI. The authors warned that overuse of AI could leave cognitive muscles 'atrophied and unprepared' for when they are needed. Nataliya Kosmyna, the lead researcher on the MIT study, said the findings demonstrated the 'pressing matter of a likely decrease in learning skills' in those using AI tools when learning or at work. While the AI-assisted group was allowed to use a chatbot in their first three essays, in their final session they were asked to rely solely on their brains. The group continued to show lower memory and critical thinking skills, which the researchers said highlighted concerns that 'frequent AI tool users often bypass deeper engagement with material, leading to 'skill atrophy' in tasks like brainstorming and problem-solving'. The essays written with the help of ChatGPT were also found to be homogenous, repeating similar themes and language. Researchers said AI chatbots could increase 'cognitive debt' in students and lead to 'long-term costs, such as diminished critical inquiry, increased vulnerability to manipulation, decreased creativity'. Teachers have been sounding the alarm that pupils routinely cheating on tests and essays using AI chatbots. A survey by the Higher Education Policy Institute in February found 88pc of UK students were using AI chatbots to help with assessments and learning and that 18pc had directly plagiarised AI text into their work. OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, was contacted for comment.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Your Brain Is Glowing, and Scientists Can't Figure Out Why
Life, for the most part, is bathed in light. The sun immerses the planet in energy that supports the vast majority of ecosystems that call Earth home. But life also generates its own light—and not just the bioluminescence of glowworms and lamp-headed anglerfish or the radiation produced by heat. In a phenomenon scientists refer to as ultraweak photon emissions (UPEs), living tissues emit a continuous stream of low-intensity light, or biophotons. Scientists think that this light comes from the biomolecular reactions that generate energy, which create photons as by-products. The more energy a tissue burns, the more light it gives off—which means, of our body's tissues, our brain should glow brightest of all. In a new study published in the journal iScience, researchers detected biophotons emitted by the human brain from outside the skull for the first time. What's more, emissions of biophotons from the brain changed when participants switched between different cognitive tasks—though the relationship between brain activity and biophoton emissions was far from straightforward. The study authors think this may be hinting at a deeper role these particles of light might be playing in the brain. [Sign up for Today in Science, a free daily newsletter] On some level, all matter emits photons. That's because everything has a temperature above absolute zero and radiates photons as heat, often with longer wavelengths (infrared light) than can be seen with our eyes. UPEs are orders of magnitude more intense than this thermal radiation, with wavelengths in the visible or near-visible light range of the electromagnetic spectrum. As living cells generate energy through metabolism, they create oxygen molecules with excited electrons as by-products. When these worked-up electrons return to a lower energy state, they emit photons through a process called radiative decay. Researchers studying biological tissues, including neurons in petri dishes, can detect this as a weak but continuous stream of light—from a few photons to several hundred photons per square centimeter each second. 'Scaling this up to humans, we wanted to know if those photons might be involved in some information processing or propagation [in the brain],' says senior author Nirosha Murugan, a biophysicist at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario. Scientists have been proposing that biophotons play a role in cellular communication for at least a century. In 1923 Alexander Gurwitsch conducted experiments where he showed that photon-blocking barriers placed between onion roots could prevent the plant from growing. In the past few decades, a handful of studies have added weight to the possible role biophotons play in cellular communication, which influences an organism's growth and development. With this work in mind, Murugan and her team wanted to see if they could detect hints of this phenomenon at the level of the human brain. First, they needed to see if they could measure UPEs emitted by a working brain from outside the skull. In a blacked out room, 20 participants wore head caps studded with electroencephalography (EEG) electrodes to measure the brain's electrical activity. Photon-amplifying tubes to detect UPEs were positioned around their head. The photon detectors were clustered over two brain regions: the occipital lobes in the back of the brain, which are responsible for visual processing, and temporal lobes on each side of the brain, which are responsible for auditory processing. To distinguish brain UPEs from background levels of photons in the room, the team also set up separate UPE detectors facing away from the participants. 'The very first finding is that photons are coming out of the head—full stop. It's independent, it's not spurious, it's not random,' Murugan says. Next, she wanted to see if the intensity of these emissions would change depending on what sort of cognitive task people were performing. Because the brain is such a metabolically expensive organ, she reasoned that UPE intensity should increase when people were engaged in tasks that required more energy, such as visual processing. This is roughly what happens to neurons in a dish—more neural activity means more UPE emissions. But while biophotons coming from participants' heads could be easily distinguished from background levels of photons in the room, increased EEG activity in a given brain region didn't result in higher levels of biophotons being captured by the closest detector. Clearly, something changes when you move from a few cells on a petri dish to a living brain. 'Maybe [UPEs] are not getting picked up by our detector because they could be getting used or absorbed or scattered within the brain,' Murugan suggests. The researchers did find, however, that changes in the UPE signals came only when participants changed cognitive tasks, such as opening or closing their eyes, suggesting some link between brain processing and the biophotons it emits. This leaves researchers with more questions than answers about what these UPEs are doing in the brain. 'I think this is a very intriguing and potentially groundbreaking approach [for measuring brain activity, though] there are still many uncertainties that need to be explored,' says Michael Gramlich, a biophysicist at Auburn University, who was not involved in the new study. 'The essential question to address,' he says, is whether 'UPEs are an active mechanism to alter cognitive processes or if UPEs simply reinforce more traditional mechanisms of cognition.' Daniel Remondini, a biophysicist at the University of Bologna in Italy, points to another open question: 'How far can these photons travel inside biological matter?" The answer could shed some light on the lack of clear relationship between brain activity and photon detections in different regions, he says. To answer these new questions, Murugan and her team want to use more precise sensor arrays to find where in the brain these photons are coming from. Scientists at the University of Rochester are also developing nanoscale probes to determine whether nerve fibers can transmit biophotons. Even if our brain's steady glow doesn't play a role in how it works, the technique of measuring biophotons alongside electrical signals—what Murugan and her colleagues call photoencephalography—could still one day be a useful way to noninvasively measure brain states. 'I suspect the technique will become widely adopted in the coming decades even if the theory that UPEs support cognition proves not to be true,' Gramlich says.
CTV News
14-06-2025
- Health
- CTV News
Elite hockey players show position-based brain strengths, SFU research finds
A new study is shedding light on differences in brain activity between hockey players in various positions. While most athletes spend countless hours training their bodies to maximize physical performance, research conducted by experts at Simon Fraser University shows there are also benefits to mental training. 'You look at star hockey players like Connor McDavid and Nathan MacKinnon, and we may be reaching the limits of physical speed,' said lead researcher Eric Kirby, an SFU PhD graduate now with HealthTech Connex Inc. 'But the brain is highly adaptable — and we now have the tools to measure and enhance that adaptability.' Researchers used the portable NeuroCatchbrain scanner, developed by HealthTech Connex in partnership with SFU, to assess 378 elite Junior A hockey players across British Columbia. The data showed that forwards had the fastest cognitive and auditory processing speeds, while goaltenders demonstrated the strongest attentional focus. On average, the study found a 60-millisecond processing speed difference between forwards and defencemen. 'We can measure you thinking faster and we can optimize that so you're actually able to perform better from a mental processing point of view,' said Dr. Ryan D'Arcy, a neuroscientist at SFU and co-founder of NeuroCatch. 'That processing advantage not only boosts performance but also enhances safety. In contact sports, being able to read patterns and react quickly can help you avoid a hit.' D'Arcy said the scanner is lightweight, non-invasive and can be used immediately after players step off the ice, allowing for real-time evaluation of high-performance brain activity. The device measures brain activity related to sensory input, attention and cognitive function. 'NeuroCatch is like a blood pressure cuff for the brain — a portable tool to measure and track brain health,' said D'Arcy. The scan takes about six minutes and uses a soft electrode cap to record data. 'We now have an incredible list of things that allow 50 to 150 milliseconds off your ability to cognitively anticipate the play,'
CTV News
14-06-2025
- Health
- CTV News
Study examines hockey players' brains during games
Vancouver Watch A new study is shedding light on differences in brain activity between hockey players in various positions.
