Lifeboat Foundation

A small clinical trial of 10 patients with early Alzheimer’s disease has shown that the memory loss and cognitive impairment caused by the disease can be reversed.

Scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles found a new treatment that could potentially reverse memory loss and cognitive impairment among patients with early Alzheimer’s disease.

In a small clinical trial, 10 individuals underwent a treatment called “metabolic enhancement for neurodegeneration,” or MEND. The treatment is based on 36 different factors, including changes in diet, exercise, and sleeping habits. It also includes the integration of certain drugs, vitamins, and brain stimulation therapy to a patient’s regular routine.

Continue reading “New Alzheimer’s Treatment Could Reverse Memory Loss” »

A new study helps explain how brain structure and chemistry relate to “fluid intelligence” — the ability to adapt to new situations and solve problems one has never encountered before.

The study, reported in an open-access paper in the journal NeuroImage, observed two facets of fluid intelligence*:

Continue reading “Brain markers of numeric, verbal, and spatial reasoning abilities found” »

If you think your mind is the only safe place left for all your secrets, think again, because scientists are making real steps towards reading your thoughts and putting them on a screen for everyone to see.

A team from the University of Oregon has built a system that can read people’s thoughts via brain scans, and reconstruct the faces they were visualising in their heads. As you’ll soon see, the results were pretty damn creepy.

“We can take someone’s memory — which is typically something internal and private — and we can pull it out from their brains,” one of the team, neuroscientist Brice Kuhl, told Brian Resnick at Vox.

Continue reading “Scientists have invented a mind-reading machine that visualises your thoughts” »

My new Psychology Today story on BREXIT and the EU:

Scientific innovation doesn’t just happen on its own. It takes stable economies, free societies, and open-minded governments. The best environment for science to thrive in is that of collaborating groups incentivized to communicate and cooperate with one another. This is precisely what the European Union is.

And now, more than ever, the union of Europe is needed—because we are crossing over into the transhumanist age, where radical science and technology will engulf our lives and challenge our institutions. Robots will take 75% of the jobs in the next 25 years. CRISPR gene editing technology will allow us to augment our intelligence, perhaps doubling our IQ. Bionic organs will stave off death, allowing 200 year lifespans.

Continue reading “Scientific Innovation Needs the European Union to Succeed” »

Yikes.

There have been just 37 cases in the U.S. since 2006.

3D Printing never ceases to amaze me.

Doctors at Boston Children’s Hospital used a 3D printout of a boy’s skull to prepare for the surgery that saved his life, STAT reports.

Bentley Yoder was born with encephalocele, a rare and often fatal defect in which the skull doesn’t form properly. In Bentley’s case, a significant portion of his brain grew outside of his skull, according to STAT. Despite being told he would not survive, his parents, Dustin and Sierra, continued to seek treatment that would give their son a future, eventually traveling from their home in Ohio to Boston Children’s Hospital.

Continue reading “Boston Children’s Hospital uses 3D printing to help baby born with brain outside his skull” »

Northwestern University’s Ken Forbus is closing the gap between humans and machines.

Using cognitive science theories, Forbus and his collaborators have developed a model that could give computers the ability to reason more like humans and even make moral decisions. Called the structure-mapping engine (SME), the new model is capable of analogical problem solving, including capturing the way humans spontaneously use analogies between situations to solve moral dilemmas.

“In terms of thinking like humans, analogies are where it’s at,” said Forbus, Walter P. Murphy Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering. “Humans use relational statements fluidly to describe things, solve problems, indicate causality, and weigh moral dilemmas.”

Continue reading “Structure-mapping engine enables computers to reason and learn like humans, including solving moral dilemmas” »

Whether referred to as AI, machine learning, or cognitive systems, such as IBM Watson, a growing cadre of business leaders is embracing this opportunity head on.

That’s because their consumers are using cognitive applications on a daily basis — through their phones, in their cars, with their doctors, banks, schools, and more. All of this consumer engagement is creating 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day. And thanks to IT infrastructures designed for cognitive workloads — that can understand, reason, and learn from all this data — organizations and entire industries are transforming and reaping the benefits.

What’s important to remember is that this sci-fi-turned-reality-show of cognitive computing cannot happen without the underlying systems on which the APIs, software, and services run. For this very reason, today’s leading CIOs are thinking differently about their IT infrastructure.

Continue reading “Voice: How To Architect A Cognitive Future For Business” »

Because of a plethora of data from sensor networks, Internet of Things devices and big data resources combined with a dearth of data scientists to effectively mold that data, we are leaving many important applications – from intelligence to science and workforce management – on the table.

It is a situation the researchers at DARPA want to remedy with a new program called Data-Driven Discovery of Models (D3M). The goal of D3M is to develop algorithms and software to help overcome the data-science expertise gap by facilitating non-experts to construct complex empirical models through automation of large parts of the model-creation process. If successful, researchers using D3M tools will effectively have access to an army of “virtual data scientists,” DARPA stated.

+More on Network World: Feeling jammed? Not like this I bet+

Continue reading “DARPA wants to design an army of ultimate automated data scientists” »