Case of the vanishing little grey cells

Hercule Poirot, one imagines, would have been appalled. Not by any murder – that was his metier – but by what is happening to the “little grey cells” of humanity in this age of the endless scroll. Consider his method: meticulous observation, sustained concentration, patient assembly of facts into pattern. Now picture him consulting ChatGPT mid-investigation. Mon Dieu he would exclaim, twirling his magnificent moustaches in horror. “This is not detection. This is laziness of the most criminal kind!”

Yet here we are, Baby Boomers and Gen Z alike, committing precisely this crime against our own cognition. Swipe, tap, algorithmic reel, each a tiny theft from the brain’s capacity to think. 

Neurologists in Bengaluru now report that grandparents and grandchildren present with eerily similar symptoms: memory lapses, scattered attention, diminished learning ability. Different perpetrators, same victim: human thought itself. This could be true in other big cities, even our towns.

Our little grey cells, just as Poirot’s did, require exercise. Poirot never delegated his thinking to others. Certainly not to some AI that could serve up answers faster than Mrs Oliver could devour apples. The effort of reasoning, of holding multiple threads in mind, of remembering – this was the work that kept his brain formidable well into old age.

Today’s young people, neurologists observe, search Google before the question has fully formed in their minds. An hour later, half the answer has evaporated. Their elders, meanwhile, having retired from mental exertion as thoroughly as from their professions, scroll through feeds and message threads, never pausing long enough to truly engage. Both groups are outsourcing cognition to their phones.

The brain, it seems, is very much like Poirot himself: it does not appreciate being made redundant. When we no longer ask it to work – to spell, to calculate, to remember a friend’s birthday without calendar alerts – it begins, quietly, to withdraw its services. Not through damage, doctors clarify, but through disuse. Architecture remains sound – function atrophies.

Poirot would have prescribed his usual cure: method and discipline. Put down the phone. Read a book – a proper one, not scrolling text. Engage the grey cells with crosswords, with conversation requiring more than abbreviations, with questions that demand we think rather than tap. 

The solution is unglamorous but elementary. To solve the mystery of our disappearing cognitive abilities, we need only examine the method of the crime: we have, all of us, become accomplices in our own mental diminishment. As Poirot might say: ‘It is simple, but not easy, mon ami.’

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