A collaborative study undertaken by scientists from Oxford, Mellon. MIT and UC universities published in April is entitled “AI Assistance Reduces Persistence and Hurts Independent Performance”. It found that even after as little as 10 minutes use of AI to assist with problem solving, participants in the study became more AI dependent. The effect was observed across a variety of tasks including mathematical reasoning and reading comprehension. They gained a short term advantage of greater speed to reach a solution, but subsequently suffered from a reduced ability to persist with challenging tasks and an impairment of performance. In other words, they performed significantly worse without AI and were more likely to give up. The authors concluded:
“Persistence is reduced because AI conditions people to expect immediate answers, thereby denying them the experience of working through challenges on their own”
Almost 20 years ago Norman Doige published his seminal work on neuroplasticity entitled “The Brain That Changes Itself”. He found that the brain had a remarkably dynamic and prolific ability to change its neural structure second by second in response to experiences, thoughts and the environment. In fact, billions of synaptic connections change in the adult human brain every day. But here is the rub—a 2013 study entitled “Use it or lose it: How neurogenesis keeps the brain fit for learning” investigated the extensive body of scientific literature showing that
“New neurons and neural connections are only kept alive by effortful learning, a process that involves concentration in the present moment of experience over some extended period of time”.
Astonishingly, AI advocates and heavy users seem to have overlooked this well known phenomenon.
The debilitating effects of modern technologies don’t stop there. The Washington Post has published an article entitled “Ozempic may be reshaping the brain, scientists say”. It reports that GLP-1 drugs may be rewiring circuits involved not only in appetite but in emotion, desire and beyond. Allison Shapiro, an assistant professor at the University of Colorado Anschutz, was part of a team studying 13 teens and young women with a hormonal disorder affecting the ovaries who were put on GLP-1 drugs. As part of testing to catalogue the effect of the medication on their bodies, Shapiro took brain scans before and after. After a few months of Ozempic use, she was astonished to find extensive changes in the brain’s salience network which is related to attention.
The salience network has only recently been recognised as a large scale moderator of brain activity. It constantly monitors the external world and carefully decides how other brain networks react to new information and stimuli. It moderates how we switch between internal executive decision making and responses dictated by external stimuli. The salience network also plays a critical role in processing pain, emotion, reward, and motivation in connection with the limbic system. In these cases, the network decides and moderates how much the human body listens to signals involving emotional response.
The discovery of brain changes associated with Ozempic use is worrying Shapiro said:
“…because we didn’t expect to see this effect, and we really don’t know what it means.”
The findings come amid increasing concern about reports of emotional dulling from longer term use of GLP-1 drugs. This is termed anhedonia—the reduced ability to experience pleasure from things you used to love, such as hobbies, music, socialising, or sex. Just sit back and contemplate what the phrase “we really don’t know what it means” implies. GLP-1 users are changing the way their brains work but no one told them it might happen and no one knows what the end game might be. Thus the study findings reveal that:
The tens of millions of people worldwide who are taking GLP-1 drugs are actually part of a giant unplanned and unmonitored neuroscience experiment.
You don’t have to search very far before you come across a worrying trend among weight loss GLP-1 drug users that borders on the development of addictive behaviours. More powerful weight loss drugs are in the research pipeline. Many people are obtaining them through the internet. The UK Daily Mail published an article yesterday with the sensational title “Disturbing reason so many are risking their health by injecting the new, unlicensed Godzilla of fat jabs: Black market ‘Reta’ is everywhere… this is how it supercharges your weight loss – and its brutal side-effects“. It recounts the obsessive and experimental drug use behavioural patterns that accompany the search for the perfect GLP-1 body. Behaviours that lead people to ignore dramatic adverse effects and risks which are discussed in a Washington Post article entitled “An experimental GLP-1 pushes the limits of weight loss. There are risks.” These risks commonly include muscle mass loss, weakened bones, electrolyte imbalances, gallstones, a compromised immune system, hormone disruptions and more serious complications for some users.
In a world dominated by artificially constructed images of beauty and health, the desire for miracle levels of weight loss is so strong that the demand for GLP-1 drugs is threatening to outstrip supply. The profits are also mouth watering for drug manufacturers. In the over heated atmosphere of medical public relations hype, the concept of miraculous cures has not only gripped the public imagination and the field of corporate dreaming, but it has also overtaken the established safety processes of medical science.
Aside from obesity and diabetes, the wish list of conditions that scientists believe GLP-1 drugs might help has become a very long one indeed. This includes, heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, alcoholism and liver disease, sleep apnea, certain cancers, inflammatory conditions like arthritis and addictive disorders, neurological conditions including Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and chronic pain. Despite the hope of a broad spectrum fix for medical conditions complicated by a high body mass index, there is no excuse for failing to take the time needed to monitor long term drug safety. Red flags are being ignored in the rush to develop new drugs. Red flags in science should trigger re-examination of fundamental assumptions, but they are being glossed over.
It is becoming increasingly clear that our genetic system functions holistically. As we reported recently in our article “The Fall of the House of Biotechnology”, drugs like Ozempic, which modify the process of genetic expression, will inevitably have very wide ranging unexpected side effects on both our physiology and psychology. Pushing ahead with the promotion of novel drugs which are designed to alter physiological processes linked to fundamental psychological traits is building a house of dynamite into our medical system which is increasingly dominated by profit rather than safety. No one knows where this will end up, but the safety signals are already ominous.
The desire for miraculous cures is nothing new, some do exist, but the promise of instant results is also the tool of the snake oil salesman. The strange mixture of A.I. and genetic medicine has led many to suspend the normal caution that should accompany the process of science. Our mind is our own until we hand control to others,
To learn more about the natural relationship between consciousness, food and health read our legacy Substack articles including The Sacred Cell and Conscious Genes and The Structure of Consciousness in which we explain how our nervous system can support the expression of a connected, self-referral stability of awareness. You can subscribe to our blog at Substack to receive key articles offering in depth analysis of the deeper principles of consciousness, sent straight to your in box. There is no charge for this.
