Brain Rot: The Neuroscience Perspective

The neologism “brain rot” has emerged as a poignant descriptor of a perceived cognitive decline in the digital age. While its first recorded use dates back to Henry David Thoreau’s 1854 book “Walden,” where he critiqued society’s tendency to undervalue complex ideas, the term has gained significant traction in recent years. Oxford University Press reported a 230% increase in its usage frequency between 2023 and 2024, ultimately crowning it as the Word of the Year for 2024.¹ This surge in popularity reflects growing societal concerns about the impact of consuming excessive amounts of low-quality online content, particularly on social media platforms.

In its contemporary context “brain rot” refers to the supposed deterioration of an individual’s mental or intellectual state, often attributed to the overconsumption of trivial or unchallenging material, especially in the realm of digital media. The term encapsulates both the cause — low-quality, low-value content prevalent on social media and the internet — and the effect — the perceived negative impact on individuals and society at large. As we delve deeper into the digital era, the concept of brain rot has become increasingly relevant, sparking discussions about cognitive health, digital habits, and the long term implications of our online behaviors.

As the digital landscape evolves at breakneck speed, the term “brain rot” has catapulted from obscure jargon to a cultural touchstone. This phenomenon has sparked widespread concern about the potential deterioration of our cognitive abilities in the face of endless digital stimulation. The image of our gray matter turning to mush under an onslaught of cat videos and infinite scrolling is both vivid and alarming. However, it’s crucial to separate evidence from fiction. This paper aims to explore what neuroscience really has to say about this phenomenon. Are we truly witnessing a cognitive crisis, or is this simply our brain’s way of adapting to a new frontier of information processing?

Imminent Research Grants

$100,000 to fund language technology innovators

Imminent was founded to help innovators who share the goal of making it easier for everyone living in our multilingual world to understand and be understood by all others. Each year, Imminent allocate $100,000 to fund five original research projects to explore the most advanced frontiers in the world of language services. Topics: Language economics – Language data – Machine learning algorithms for translation – Human-computer interaction – The neuroscience of language.

Apply now

First, we are not facing something new. Since the dawn of time, the phylogeny of the human mind is inextricably linked to our technological evolution. Our cognitive capabilities have developed through a process of “triadic niche construction,” involving continuous interactions between ecological, neural, and cognitive domains.²

Our mind, as we understand it today, is not merely a product of biological evolution, but emerges from ongoing interactions with our environment, including tools and technologies we create. The use of tools and artifacts has played a crucial role in shaping our cognitive functions. Each new technology has driven changes in our neural structures, particularly in the parietal cortex, which in turn has enabled more advanced cognitive capabilities. This reciprocal relationship between technology and cognition has accelerated human evolution, allowing for rapid adaptations to new environmental challenges and opportunities.

Let’s take as an example one of the characteristics that unequivocally define us among animals: language. Regarding the evolution of language, there is now agreement on its gradual maturation, which began with bipedal walking and was made possible by the increasingly refined use of hands.³ There is a close relationship between the use and increasingly sophisticated construction of tools and the maturation of voluntary motor control for language. In other words, humans were not born to speak; humans evolved to speak, and in this evolution, the objects held in humans’ hand played a fundamental role. Our cognitive functions are not fixed biological traits, or intrinsically natural, but rather dynamic capabilities that continue to be shaped by our technological environment. The plasticity observed in the brain, underscores the profound impact that technology has on our neural architecture and, consequently, our cognitive abilities. This ongoing co-evolution of mind and technology suggests that our cognitive landscape is continually being reshaped by the tools we create and use, highlighting the fundamental role of technology in the development and current state of human cognition.

Second, along individual ontogeny, the brain is one of the most plastic and adaptable objects in the world. The human brain is able to change the strength of existing connections but also to build new connections and new cells. Every time we learn something, memorize it, or adapt temporarily or permanently to the environment, something changes in our brain. For example, taxi drivers developed larger posterior hippocampi, correlating with the amount of time spent navigating London’s complex street layout.⁴ This structural change highlights the brain’s ability to physically modify itself in response to environmental challenges, like working as a taxi driver in the chaotic London.

Our minds and technology co-evolve, with each new tool reshaping human cognition.

However, such plasticity comes at a significant metabolic cost. The brain, while comprising only 2% of body weight, consumes about 20% of the body’s energy at rest. This high energy demand is particularly pronounced during learning and memory formation, with studies showing that even simple associative learning in fruit flies can deplete energy reserves to the point of shortening lifespan.⁵ Importantly, the brain appears to modify itself only when there is a clear benefit, as evidenced by the optimal number of neurons that participate in memory formation to balance accuracy and energy expenditure. This suggests that brain plasticity is a carefully regulated process, balancing the need for adaptation with the high energetic costs of neural remodeling.

Third, it is indisputable that the current technological context offers a new environment to our brains. In this new scenario, what neuroscience has been able to investigate so far are certainly not long-term adaptations (like the phylogenetic ones described above) or evidence for a brain rot destiny. At present, it is fair to assert that evidence is being gathered for the contingent processing of new technologies by the human brain. Something more similar to the plastic adaptation mentioned in the second point but with a crucial issue. Today, neuroscience can say very little with respect to the causal role of technologies on our brain functioning. For example, last month, a study⁶ scanning the brains of over a hundred undergraduate students found that those with a strong attachment to short online videos exhibited structural differences in their brains. Participants who expressed a deep reliance on such content had increased gray matter in the orbitofrontal cortex, a region linked to decision-making and emotional regulation, as well as in the cerebellum, which is involved in movement and emotions. Researchers suggested that this “neural bloating” might indicate heightened sensitivity to the rewards of short video content, potentially reinforcing compulsive viewing habits. We do not know whether this specific functioning is consequent to massive video enjoyment or not; in fact, the same participants were not tested in the study before and after excessive enjoyment of short videos.

It is also reasonable to conclude, for example, that precisely those with a more developed orbitofrontal cortex are more prone in incurring in activities that provide frequent reinforcement such as zapping or scrolling short videos. There is evidence that a reduction of gray matter in the same orbitofrontal region of the human brain is related to obesity conditions because it would facilitate massive food intake. What should we think: “too many” neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex lead us to compulsive TikTok use, while a reduction of them to binge eating? It doesn’t make any sense. It makes no sense because scientific research in general and neuroscientific research in particular should not be read in this way.

The neuroscientific data we possess can illustrate how the human brain is interacting with these new tools, rather than about the direct consequences of their presence in our evolution. For example,⁷ online social networking engages similar brain regions as real-world social cognition, but also recruits additional areas unique to the online environment (i.e., brain regions helpful for face-name matching). However, fundamental structures of human social networks appear to remain unchanged online, suggesting our brains process online and offline social connections in surprisingly similar ways. Internet searching and online information use are related to an improvement of people ability to remember where to find information rather than the information itself.⁸ This cognitive functioning is associated with reduced activation in brain regions involved in long-term memory formation.

Interpreting this deactivation as negative rather than adaptive is a subjective and deductive aspect of scientific reasoning, but it is not the only possible perspective. Nonetheless, it has been a common and traditional interpretation. Nearly two decades ago, The Atlantic published a cover story posing the question, “Is Google making us stupid?” — with the resounding answer being “Yes!” In the article, author Nicholas Carr lamented that he once felt like a “scuba diver in the sea of words,” but, due to Google, now skimmed “along the surface like a guy on a jet ski.” Around the same time, a wave of questionable and good brain imaging studies emerged, some claiming to reveal the devastating effects of the internet and some stating the opposite. Then came the turn of video games. In Mind Change,⁹ Susan Greenfield launched a media campaign warning that the impact of the internet and video games on the brain posed a threat to humanity comparable to climate change.

In conclusion, while excessive engagement in any habit — from endlessly scrolling TikTok videos to obsessively reading Les Misérables — is not indicative of typical functioning and warrants attention and concern, what we know from neuroscience about the brain’s phylogenetic adaptation, its undeniable plasticity throughout life, and its ongoing interaction with new technologies suggests that changes are inevitable. Whether these changes will be detrimental or not remains to be seen, but our perspective should shift from a purely evaluative lens to one that acknowledges the brain’s adaptive nature.

Martina Ardizzi

Neuropsychologist researcher

Martina Ardizzi obtained her Master degree in Neurosciences and Neuropsychological Rehabilitation at the University of Bologna (Italy) in 2010. In 2014 she achieved her PhD in Neuroscience at the University of Parma, Italy, under the supervision of prof. Vittorio Gallese, studying the effect of childhood maltreatment on intersubjectivity development in Sierra Leone. At the moment, she is fixed-term researcher at the Department of Medicine and Surgery – Unit of Neuroscience of the University of Parma.

1. ‘Brain rot’ named Oxford Word of the Year 2024
2. Iriki, A., & Taoka, M. (2012). Triadic (ecological, neural, cognitive) niche construction: a scenario of human brain evolution extrapolating tool use and language from the control of reaching actions. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 367(1585), 10-23.
3. Stout, D., & Chaminade, T. (2012). Stone tools, language and the brain in human evolution. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 367(1585), 75-87.
4. Maguire, E. A., Gadian, D. G., Johnsrude, I. S., Good, C. D., Ashburner, J., Frackowiak, R. S., & Frith, C. D. (2000). Navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of taxi drivers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 97(8), 4398-4403.
5. Li, H. L., & Van Rossum, M. C. (2020). Energy efficient synaptic plasticity. Elife, 9, e50804.
6. Gao, Y., Hu, Y., Wang, J., Liu, C., Im, H., Jin, W., … & Wang, Q. (2025). Neuroanatomical and functional substrates of the short video addiction and its association with brain transcriptomic and cellular architecture. NeuroImage, 307, 121029.
7. J. Firth, J. Torous, B. Stubbs, J.A. Firth, G.Z. Steiner, L. Smith, J. Sarris, «The “online brain”: how the Internet may be changing our cognition», World Psychiatry, 18(2), 2019, pp. 119-129.
8. Is Google Making Us Stupid? – The Atlantic
9. Greenfield, S. (2015). Mind change: How digital technologies are leaving their mark on our brains. Random House.