A new peptide may hold potential as an Alzheimer’s treatment - while exercise boosts brain health

MIT neuroscientists have found a way to reverse neurodegeneration and other symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease by interfering with an enzyme that is typically overactive in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients.

At the same time, investigation continues around how exercise releases chemical signals that boost brain health.
Beckman researchers studied how chemical signals from contracting muscles promote healthy brains. Their findings reveal how these signals help grow and regulate new brain networks while also pointing toward ways of improving brain health through exercise.

AI modelling that help to re-create what people see by reading brain scans

As neuroscientists struggle to demystify how the human brain converts what our eyes see into mental images, artificial intelligence (AI) has been getting better at mimicking that feat. A recent study, scheduled to be presented at an upcoming computer vision conference, demonstrates that AI can read brain scans and re-create largely realistic versions of images a person has seen. As this technology develops, researchers say, it could have numerous applications, from exploring how various animal species perceive the world to perhaps one day recording human dreams and aiding communication in people with paralysis.


Unlike previous efforts using AI algorithms to decipher brain scans, which had to be trained on large data sets, Stable Diffusion was able to get more out of less training for each participant by incorporating photo captions into the algorithm. It’s a novel approach that incorporates textual and visual information to “decipher the brain,” says Ariel Goldstein, a cognitive neuroscientist at Princeton University who was not involved with the work.

The AI algorithm makes use of information gathered from different regions of the brain involved in image perception, such as the occipital and temporal lobes, according to Yu Takagi, a systems neuroscientist at Osaka University who worked on the experiment. The system interpreted information from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans, which detect changes in blood flow to active regions of the brain. When people look at a photo, the temporal lobes predominantly register information about the contents of the image (people, objects, or scenery), whereas the occipital lobe predominantly registers information about layout and perspective, such as the scale and position of the contents. All of this information is recorded by the fMRI as it captures peaks in brain activity, and these patterns can then be reconverted into an imitation image using AI.

Dementia only causes about 41% of cognitive decline: new study identifies other predictors

Cognitive decline naturally occurs as we age, with a common belief that dementia is the cause in most cases.

Recently, researchers at the Ohio State University say there are more factors causing cognitive decline than we once thought.

Socioeconomic factors, physical health measures, and behaviors, including exercise and smoking, accounted for 38% of the variation between participants in their level of cognitive function at age 54, researchers reported.

This study is focused on identifying predictors of cognitive decline.

2022: The year in innovation

The well know year review from McKinsey for 2022, reveals how clients around the world are developing resilience in the face of a seemingly unrelenting set of disruptions. 

For  highest-priority articles and features, here is a roundup of some of most innovative experiences of 2022, including top ten lists, a complete collection of 2022’s innovations.

Clearly AI is going to win, says Daniel Kahneman

Daniel Kahneman, 87, Nobel prize in economics in 2002 for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making. His book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, a worldwide bestseller, was key on my master thesis and set out revolutionary ideas about human error and bias and how those traits might be recognized and mitigated. 

(for those interested, here's Chat GPT summary of the book)

A new book, Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment, written with Olivier Sibony and Cass R Sunstein, applies those ideas to organizations in a moment where Daniel Kahneman states  

"Clearly AI is going to win. How people are going to adjust is a fascinating problem!"

Click for the full interview 

The Simpson’s Paradox when analyzing data and taking decisions

When we want to study relationships in data (eg, in observations of the world), we can plot, cross-tabulate, or model that data. When we do this, we might come across cases where the relationships we see from two different views of a single dataset lead us to opposing conclusions. These are cases of Simpson’s Paradox.

Finding these cases can help us understand our data better and discover interesting relationships. This article gives some examples of where these cases happen, discusses how and why they happen, and suggests ways to automatically detect these situations in your own data.

Simpson’s Paradox refers to a situation where you believe you understand the direction of a relationship between two variables, but when you consider an additional variable, that direction appears to reverse.


Simpson’s Paradox happens because disaggregation of the data (e.g., splitting it into subgroups) can cause certain subgroups to have an imbalanced representation compared to other subgroups. This might be due to the relationship between the variables, or simply due to the way that the data has been partitioned into subgroups.

Here is an example of this, with a scientific evidence showing that unvaccinated people are more likely to develop severe COVID-19 and die, contrary to claim in viral social media posts about Germany data.

Top 10 Cognitive Computing Trends

Cognitive computing is the amalgamation of cognitive science and is established on the basic premise of simulating the generic thought process.

Cognitive computing trends are a consistent flow of learning techniques that combines many disruptive technologies like AI and machine learning wrapped with sentiment analysis and contextual awareness to fix day-to-day problems, just like humans. These techniques employ different processes such as data mining, recognition of patterns, and language processing. Today top cognitive computing trends are experiencing a dramatic change as companies are getting more engaged in developing Artificial Intelligence (AI) and are competing in the market to get a step ahead. Cognitive computing trends can help us in realizing the potential of AI as it helps in imitating the activity of the human brain. 

Emerging top cognitive computing trends can be useful in developing an automated system for solving complex problems by itself. Here in this article, we will discuss the top 10 cognitive computing trends for 2023.