Each participant wore an EEG cap to track real-time brain activity. The experiment ran for four months, with each student writing three essays, and a fourth session where some swapped their assigned method.
Unfortunately, the results were exactly what you might expect. Students who wrote their essays without any outside help showed the highest brain activity, especially in regions tied to memory, creativity, and semantic processing. Those who used search engines showed less activity but still engaged their brains more than the group using the AI chatbot. The ChatGPT group showed the lowest brain activity of all, with up to a 55% drop in neural connectivity compared to the unaided group, as measured by a method called Dynamic Directed Transfer Function. (This technique tracks how information moves across different parts of the brain and is considered a good marker for executive function, attention, and semantic processing.)
It gets worse. When researchers asked students to recall or summarize what they had written, the genAI-assisted group remembered less and felt less ownership of their work. In the final session, when students who had used the tech were suddenly asked to write without it, their performance and brain engagement lagged behind those who had started out unaided.
This story originally appeared on Computerworld
