<![CDATA[Learn how cognitive remediation, aerobic exercise, and reducing secondary risks can boost thinking skills and daily functioning in schizophrenia.]]>
<![CDATA[Experts reveal why psych medication nonadherence is common, how to discuss it without blame, and tools like CAE and injectables to prevent relapse.]]>
Essex Partnership digital tool improves leg wound and ulcer care
Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust has introduced a digital tool to improve care for patients with leg ulcers and wounds.
The Download: AI bottleneck debates, and BCI trials take off
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
A startup claims it broke through a bottleneck that’s holding back LLMs
AI startup Subquadratic came out of stealth last month with a huge claim: it had solved a mathematical bottleneck that had held back large language models for almost a decade.
The purported breakthrough comes from slashing the number of computations transformers need to carry out to generate answers. The result is a faster and cheaper LLM that uses far less energy than any other model on the market.
Many experts remained skeptical—but Subquadratic has started to share the receipts. They suggest that their approach might be worth paying attention to.
Here’s how the system works—and why some researchers still aren’t convinced.
—Will Douglas Heaven
Brain-computer interface trials are taking off
—Jessica Hamzelou
This week, I covered the story of Casey Harrell—a man with ALS who is “the first power user” of a brain implant. The device has enabled him to maintain an income, reconnect with friends and family, and read to his daughter. He told me that it’s “nothing short of revolutionary.”
Over the past couple of years, the number of BCI trial volunteers has soared. This year, China became the first country to approve a BCI for medical use. Advances in technology are allowing engineers to provide more features than ever. BCI research is properly taking off.
Find out how the technology is edging from the lab towards the market.
This story is from The Checkup, our weekly newsletter giving you the inside track on all things biotech. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Thursday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 Amazon workers who backed data center limits may face termination
The engineers say they’re under investigation by the company. (NYT $)
+ And could face discipline, including potential termination. (The Verge)
+They had testified at meetings about pausing data centers. (CNBC)
+ They’ve filed a joint complaint to Seattle’s Office for Civil Rights. (Wired $)
2 A new fossil discovery has rewritten 150 years of evolutionary theory
It suggests early land vertebrates skipped the tadpole stage. (New Scientist $)
+ And raises questions about how vertebrates adapted to land. (404 Media)
+ Sponges may have been the first animals. (MIT Technology Review)
3 Bernie Sanders plans to give the public direct ownership of AI firms
He’s unveiled new legislation to create an AI sovereign wealth fund. (AP News)
+ It would be funded through a one-time tax on AI companies’ stock. (Quartz)
+ And make annual payments directly to Americans. (Washington Post $)
4 Investors in China secretly acquired stakes in SpaceX before its IPO
One had ties to Chinese military contractors. (ProPublica)
+ The US fears China has got one of ASML’s top machines. (Reuters $)
5 Researchers have figured out Russia’s nuclear-powered missile
They call it “a terrible idea”—but not an impossible one. (NPR)
+ NASA is building a nuclear reactor-powered spacecraft. (MIT Technology Review)
6 Longevity medicine faces a do-or-die moment in a landmark trial
It will test whether cellular aging can be safely reversed in humans. (Axios)
+ The next step is “chemical reprogramming.” (MIT Technology Review)
7 Studies suggest AI may already be deskilling professionals
Over-reliance appears to weaken doctors’ and engineers’ abilities. (Nature)
8 Tech workers who maxed out their AI use are now trying to minimize it
Spiralling costs mean “tokenminning” has replaced “tokenmaxxing.” (NYT $)
9 Scientists say the human genome’s structure may confound AI models
Which would constrain AI-based models of biology and disease. (Quanta)
10 A new robotic self-driving toilet brings the bathroom to you
The Xiaoban also cleans up and empties itself all on its own. (The Verge)
Quote of the day
“They hated me. They were doing everything they could to knock me down. And look at them now.”
—Donald Trump mocks Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos in a conversation with Elon Musk that’s recounted in a new book, Wired reports.
One More Thing
PABLO DELCAN
Technology can help us feed the world, if we look beyond profit
The pandemic exposed the weak spots in our interconnected food system. They’re the result of decades’ worth of technological advances, from globe-spanning shipping to refrigeration networks. But technology is not inherently opposed to sustainable and resilient food systems.
Powerful technologies like genetic modification can create stronger local agriculture and a healthier food system—but they normally aren’t. The challenge is ensuring they serve food security and human well-being, rather than simply maximizing profits.
Dive into our food system’s problems and the solutions that technology can provide.
—Fabio Parasecoli
We can still have nice things
A place for comfort, fun, and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)
+ This intriguing video tracks the covert reality of Japan’s shinobi.
+ Dive into this admirably obsessive archive covering over 100 different ways to tie your shoes.
+ One of the world’s largest digital collections of plants and fungi is now available for free to everyone.
+ A grand orchestra has beautifully covered Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature” at Abbey Road Studios.
Local brain connectome parameters across the spectrum of clinical cognitive decline
Neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and autism disrupt the brain’s structural and functional organization, particularly in specific regions, and ultimately lead to cognitive impairments. In Alzheimer’s disease-related dementia, neuronal degeneration impairs structural connectivity between brain regions, which in turn leads to functional breakdowns. This phenomenon, referred to as disconnection syndrome, manifests as connectivity breakdowns in affected regions, with these localized changes indirectly influencing the entire brain network. As the disease progresses, patterns consistent with compensatory-type reorganization have been described in the literature, accompanied by structural and functional changes that have been hypothesized to transiently mitigate cognitive decline during early stages. This study examines the structural and functional reorganization of the brain across the clinical spectrum of Alzheimer’s disease by analyzing local nodal changes using measures such as degree, strength, clustering coefficient, and betweenness centrality. Our findings show that early-stage nodal patterns are consistent with this hypothesized reorganization, whereas later-stage changes are dominated by progressive structural decline alongside persistent functional reorganization. Because the present study is cross-sectional and group-level, the compensatory interpretation should be regarded as a working hypothesis rather than a confirmed mechanism, and these exploratory patterns require validation in independent and longitudinal cohorts before clinical translation.
Evaluation of an open-face 8-channel transmit 64-channel receive 7T head coil for neuroimaging
IntroductionUltra-high field (UHF) 7 tesla (7T) MRI offers unique diagnostic opportunities for clinical neuroimaging. However, broader clinical implementation remains limited because the reduced radiofrequency (RF) wavelength at 7T causes RF transmit field (B1+) inhomogeneity, resulting in spatial variation in image signal and tissue contrast. These effects are particularly pronounced in the skull base, temporal lobes, and posterior fossa, regions frequently implicated in neurological disease. RF parallel transmission (pTx) techniques can improve B1+ homogeneity through optimization of multiple transmit fields, while parallel imaging with multiple receive elements enables accelerated acquisitions. To fully exploit these advantages at UHF, RF coils combining high-performance transmit and high-density receive arrays are required.MethodsAn open-face eight-channel transmit 64-channel receive (8Tx64Rx) 7T head coil was developed with electrical and mechanical ergonomic features designed to improve usability and imaging homogeneity. The coil was evaluated in an in vivo validation study assessing ease of use, participant comfort, diagnostic value, and image quality using questionnaires and structured scoring sheets. Imaging performance of the 8Tx64Rx coil was compared with that of a commercially available regulatory approved 7T head coil featuring single transmit (sTx) and a 32-channel receive array. Diagnostic image quality acquired using circularly polarized (CP) mode and pTx mode was additionally assessed and compared.ResultsThe 8Tx64Rx coil demonstrated image quality that was equivalent or superior to the commercial 7T head coil across evaluated measures. In particular, improved signal homogeneity was achieved within the posterior fossa and temporal lobes. The coil also supported practical clinical use through favorable ergonomic performance and user comfort during scanning. Diagnostic image quality was enhanced when using pTx approaches compared with conventional transmit configurations.DiscussionThe developed 8Tx64Rx 7T head coil demonstrates the potential to advance clinical neuroimaging at UHF by improving B1+ homogeneity in anatomically challenging brain regions while maintaining usability and diagnostic performance. These findings support the integration of combined high-density receive arrays and pTx technology to overcome key limitations of 7T MRI and facilitate broader clinical adoption.
Acoustic stimulation in pain management: neurobiological mechanisms and clinical applications—a narrative review
Pain affects over 30% of the global population, with an underlying pathogenesis involving a complex interplay of biopsychosocial factors. Despite the availability of conventional pharmacological and interventional therapies, their clinical utility is frequently constrained by concerns regarding substance misuse, surgical complications, and other adverse sequelae. Acoustic stimulation (AS) has emerged as a promising alternative in pain management, characterized by its non-invasive nature, favorable safety profile, and high cost-effectiveness. However, current literature lacks a comprehensive evaluation of cutting-edge AS technologies and a profound decryption of its pleiotropic analgesic mechanisms, which has hindered the integration of AS into multimodal analgesic strategies. This review provides the first comprehensive synthesis of the neurobiological mechanisms and clinical applications of AS. We comprehensively evaluate the analgesic efficacy of diverse modalities, ranging from established interventions—such as music therapy (MT), natural sounds (NS)/noise, and auditory beat stimulation (ABS)—to emerging approaches, including vibroacoustic therapy (VAT) and immersive interactive technologies that integrate multisensory acoustic information. Emerging evidence suggests that AS exerts its therapeutic effects via a multidimensional neurobiological framework, notably through the modulation of corticothalamic circuits, the activation of descending pain-inhibitory systems, and the dynamic regulation of neurochemical mediators. Clinical data consistently highlight the adjunctive value of MT, NS/noise, and VAT in the management of both acute and chronic pain. Furthermore, the convergence of AS with immersive interactive technologies is pioneering a novel digital intervention paradigm, facilitating the seamless integration of AS into multimodal analgesic frameworks. Collectively, these findings suggest that AS represents a robust, non-pharmacological strategy that warrants further exploration as a cornerstone of future personalized, multimodal pain management.
Disrupted glymphatic function and its relationship with sleep and cognitive impairment in ME/CFS assessed via DTI-ALPS
The glymphatic system is a recently discovered brain waste clearance system that is mostly active during sleep and disengaged during wakefulness. Impaired glymphatic function leads to the deposition of metabolic waste products in the brain potentially causing inflammation leading to various symptoms in ME/CFS. While the glymphatic function has been assessed in other neurodegenerative diseases using ‘diffusion tensor imaging along the perivascular space’ (DTI-ALPS), it has not been studied in Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS). This preliminary study investigates glymphatic function in 58 participants (ME/CFS = 31 and healthy controls = 27) using the DTI-ALPS index derived from DTI data acquired with 3 T MRI. The bilateral hemispheric DTI-ALPS index was estimated to assess glymphatic function, and an asymmetry index was calculated to determine interhemispheric asymmetry in glymphatic function. We found that the global DTI-ALPS index was significantly lower in ME/CFS patients compared to healthy controls (ME/CFS: 1.44 ± 0.086; healthy controls: 1.51 ± 0.11, p = 0.014), indicating reduced glymphatic function in ME/CFS. Examining the hemispheres separately, showed the right hemisphere DTI-ALPS index was lower in ME/CFS than healthy controls (ME/CFS = 1.41 ± 0.097; healthy controls = 1.49 ± 0.12; p = 0.009) but not different on the left. Additionally, we did not find any significant difference in asymmetry index between ME/CFS and healthy controls. We observed an association between the global DTI-ALPS index and severity of ‘sleep disturbance’ (p = 0.013, r = −0.47) and “impaired concentration” (p = 0.026, r = −0.43). This study demonstrated impaired glymphatic function in ME/CFS which may lead to symptoms such as cognitive dysfunction and sleep disturbance experienced by ME/CFS.
Neuromorphic-inspired multi-view global-local fusion for IR-UWB radar dynamic gesture recognition
IntroductionDynamic gesture recognition using impulse radio ultra-wideband (IR-UWB) radar has attracted increasing interest for privacy-preserving and illumination-robust human-computer interaction. However, single-view radar perception is susceptible to occlusion and viewpoint-dependent information loss, while existing methods often struggle to jointly model fine-grained local motion patterns and long-range temporal dependencies in time-range (TR) representations.MethodsTo address these issues, this paper proposes a neuromorphic-inspired multi-view global-local fusion network for IR-UWB radar dynamic gesture recognition. Specifically, motion-enhanced TR maps from three complementary viewpoints are first integrated via early fusion to improve the spatial completeness of radar observations. A dual-branch architecture is then employed to capture local dynamic textures and global temporal structures in parallel. In addition, an adaptive fusion module combining gated first-order fusion and bilinear second-order interaction is introduced to enhance feature complementarity and representation discriminability.ResultsExperiments on a public 12-class UWB gesture dataset under a subject-independent protocol show that the proposed method achieves an average accuracy of 98.29%, outperforming several representative baselines.DiscussionThese results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework for robust multi-view radar-based dynamic gesture recognition.
A computational pipeline for a neurotransmitter-centric analysis of the effects of psychiatric medication on EEG spectral power
IntroductionTraditional pharmaco-electroencephalography (EEG) studies have mainly examined the effects of psychotropic medications at the level of individual drugs or broad drug classes, limiting biological specificity and clinical translation. This study aimed to determine whether modeling EEG spectral power changes according to the engagement of distinct neurotransmitter systems provides a more mechanistic understanding of psychotropic drug effects in a real-world clinical population.MethodsWe analyzed 4,128 EEG sessions from 2,083 patients in the Temple University Hospital EEG Corpus, a large heterogeneous dataset. EEG data were preprocessed and segmented into canonical frequency bands (delta, theta, alpha, beta, and gamma). Psychotropic medication data were systematically extracted and coded at the receptor level for serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, histamine, and acetylcholine systems using the Neuroscience-based Nomenclature framework. Receptor profiles were summarized to represent each patient’s overall neurotransmitter engagement (agonistic, neutral, antagonistic, or mixed). Linear mixed-effects models were applied to assess relationships between neurotransmitter profiles and log-transformed spectral power while controlling for electrode location and patient-level variability.ResultsFrequency- and region-specific EEG patterns were identified across neurotransmitter systems. Dopamine antagonists were associated with higher delta and theta power at central electrode locations and lower alpha power at occipital and temporal locations, whereas dopamine agonists were associated with higher delta activity at occipital locations and increased frontal gamma power. Serotonin antagonists showed associations with elevated slow-wave and alpha power, while serotonin agonists were linked to increased frontal alpha, decreased occipital alpha, and enhanced temporal gamma power. Both norepinephrine antagonists and agonists showed positive relationships with delta power, with a broader topographical pattern for antagonists. Theta power was positively associated with norepinephrine antagonists and negatively associated with norepinephrine agonists. Norepinephrine antagonists were related to lower temporal alpha and higher frontal and parietal gamma power. Histamine antagonists and mixed histaminergic agents were associated with lower delta, theta, and alpha power. Acetylcholine antagonists were linked to higher delta, theta, and alpha power across electrode locations.DiscussionModeling psychotropic medication effects on EEG at the neurotransmitter receptor level offers a biologically grounded and clinically relevant improvement over traditional drug class-based approaches. This neurotransmitter-centric framework enhances mechanistic interpretability and may support the development of EEG biomarkers for personalized, mechanism-based psychiatric care.