The tools that were supposed to make us more creative are burning us out.
A 2025 study by Microsoft Research and Carnegie Mellon followed 319 knowledge workers and found that the more confidently we hand our thinking to generative AI, the less we exercise it: cognition shifts from doing to overseeing, and capacity we don't use is capacity we lose.1 Fatigue then locks the door: a tired brain loses cognitive reappraisal, the very mechanism it needs to recover.2 Knowing you're fried doesn't un-fry you.
Brain Cooler is a series of cognitive games designed to cool your brain down. Two to four minutes each, grounded in peer-reviewed science, each built in its own visual language. The coral growing on this page is a Turing pattern, the mathematics nature uses to grow brain coral and cortical folds.3 Because not all screen time is wasted time.
- Lee et al., The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking, CHI 2025.
- Kara et al., Frontiers in Psychology, 2025.
- Turing, The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis, 1952.
No accounts, no tracking. Your log stays on your device.