THE ORTHOGRAPHIC ATROPHY HYPOTHESIS
MYSTIC QUILL JOURNAL OF COGNITIVE SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Vol. 1, No. 1 · 2026 · DOI: 10.9999/MQJCST-2026-001 PEER REVIEWED · OPEN ACCESS · COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE THE ORTHOGRAPHIC ATROPHY HYPOTHESIS: How Autocorrect Technology Progressively Degrades Human Orthographic Memory and Cognitive Autonomy A Case-Anchored Review with Neuroimaging Evidence Selva Ganesh K¹ ¹ Independent Researcher, Tamil Nadu, India Received: May 2026 · Published: May 2026 Correspondence: mysticquill.blogspot.com ABSTRACT The author, a former spelling competition winner, presents a case-anchored neurological review of autocorrect technology's effects on human orthographic cognition. Drawing on established research in cognitive offloading, the Google Effect (Sparrow et al., 2011), and neuroimaging studies of the orthographic word lexicon located in the left ventral occipitotemporal cortex (vOT), this paper proposes the Orthographic Atrophy Hypothes...