The Memory Paradox: Why Our Brains Need Knowledge in an Age of AI

This chapter offers the first neuroscience-based theory linking the reversal of the Flynn Effect—documented declines in IQ scores across high-income countries since the 1970s—to the growing prevalence of cognitive offloading and pedagogical trends that minimize direct knowledge acquisition. Drawing on cognitive neuroscience, learning theory, and memory systems research, we argue that widespread underuse of the brain’s declarative and procedural systems has weakened internal representations—schemata—that are essential for reasoning, intuition, and expertise.We examine how shifts toward digital dependency and constructivist educational models have reduced opportunities for repeated retrieval, proceduralization, and the formation of robust engrams and neural manifolds. These trends disrupt the consolidation and automatization of biologically secondary knowledge, impairing schema-driven prediction, error correction, and transfer. We propose that the weakening of these memory systems—long before neurodegeneration sets in—may explain recent cognitive declines more plausibly than purely environmental or genetic accounts.The chapter closes by outlining implications for cognitive theory, educational practice, and AI-era learning environments. Rather than viewing memory as outdated in a world of instant information access, we argue that internal knowledge remains foundational for deep learning and that cognitive augmentation requires—not replaces—biological memory.