Speaking multiple languages may slow brain aging by up to 13 years, a new study finds. Language learning can improve attention, working memory and executive function at any age.

A young man who was left with acquired cerebral palsy (CP) following a family holiday, has had a new laboratory in Bristol named after him. Harchie Sagoo, who passed away in 2024 at the age of 18, was just a few months old when he developed CP after contracting viral encephalitis in Spain. Despite his movement and speech being affected by CP his father, Bob Sagoo, said he understood everything and by the age of four-and-a-half he was using eye-tracking technology to control his devices and communicate. As a key product tester for Bristol-based Smartbox, which creates technology to help people with disabilities to communicate, the company has now named its new testing laboratory Harchie's Lab. Tower block evacuation report'not answering questions' Harchie's dad, who lives in Nottingham, said his son was born a healthy baby.

The latest interview in our series with the AAAI/SIGAI Doctoral Consortium participants features Thi Kieu Khanh Ho who is studying time-series anomaly detection. We found out more about her research, and what inspired her to study AI, and what she plans to work on next. Tell us a bit about your PhD -- where are you studying, and what is the topic of your research? I am doing my PhD at McGill University and Mila - Québec AI Institute, in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, supervised by Professor Narges Armanfard. My research focuses on time-series anomaly detection, the problem of teaching AI systems to recognize when something unusual or abnormal is happening in complex, real-world data streams, without relying on large amounts of labeled examples.

Occam's razor has lost its edge. Can we sharpen our search for truth? Seeking out the simplest, most elegant explanations has served scientists well for centuries, but cognitive scientist Marina Dubova's experiments are revealing better ways to uncover reality Limited by the knowledge of his time, the ancient Greek astronomer Ptolemy imagined that the planets and sun of our solar system orbited Earth. Every new observation that pushed against this image required a slight tweak to that theory, until centuries later Nicolaus Copernicus's reimagining toppled it once and for all. A more elegant explanation proposed that all the planets orbited the sun, kicking off a scientific revolution that changed our understanding of the entire universe.

How healthy is your brain? In our efforts to keep our brains healthy, how do we know what is working? It shouldn't have been difficult: 72 x 72. From the back seat, my daughter, newly confident in mental maths, wanted to check her answer. Whether it was because it was the end of the day, I was trying to park or something else, I stalled, cognitively speaking. Lately, though, I have had the sense that my brain isn't firing on all cylinders.

A large-scale clinical trial has shown that even long-term consumption of DHA--an omega-3 fatty acid found in abundance in oily fish--may not lead to improvements in cognitive function. Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), an omega-3 fatty acid found in abundance in oily fish such as mackerel and sardines, is thought to improve cognitive function by supporting connections between brain cells. However, it has never been conclusively demonstrated that DHA taken as a dietary supplement actually reaches the brain or provides measurable benefits against dementia . Against this backdrop, a research team at the USC School of Medicine has published the results of a large, two-year clinical trial involving older adults at elevated risk of developing Alzheimer's disease . The study found that while high-dose DHA supplements do indeed reach the brain, they did not improve memory or cognitive function, nor did they slow brain atrophy.

Evaluations of LLM personas via psychometric questionnaires typically rely on aggregate scores, discarding within-instance correlation structure. We test whether this geometric structure is intrinsic or frame-dependent. Constructing within-instance correlation matrices from IPIP-50 responses, we analyze geometry on SPD manifolds under manipulated question orderings in GPT-4o simulating American and Chinese-American personas. We find that persona expression comprises two dissociable components: aggregated features (Big Five scores) degrade under randomization (21% drop) but are frame-robust; geometric features (SPD manifold) collapse under frame misalignment (42% drop) but recover substantially (to 84%) under shared frames, surpassing aggregated features (76%). This collapse-recovery pattern reveals that persona geometry is not intrinsic but a frame-dependent coordination pattern encoding information invisible to aggregation. Our findings establish a dual-nature framework for LLM personas, frame-dependent geometry versus frame-robust aggregates, necessitating frame-aware evaluation and challenging static trait conceptions.

A growing number of techniques leverage the spatial structures that underlie many real-world datasets. Despite these advances, the complementary task of estimating spatial structures and understanding their role within these techniques has often been overlooked. In neurophysiological data analysis specifically, numerous methods exist to estimate brain connectivity, but most are not explicitly model-based, dynamic, multivariate, or directed. To address these limitations, we previously introduced noise-driven heat modelling on graphs for neurophysiological connectivity estimation. In this study, we extend this framework by relaxing earlier noise assumptions and adding regularisation to improve robustness. We also develop a simulation procedure to characterise and evaluate our technique in a controlled setting. Finally, we demonstrate that the technique is able to capture meaningful spatial structure across two experiments, each using two real-world datasets. The explicit model formulation of our connectivity estimator has the potential to improve the interpretability of graph-based techniques across a wide range of applications. The code implementing our method is available at https://github.com/sgoerttler/Heat_Connectivity.

The Ring star Daveigh Chase's autopsy reveals actress died from AIDS after painful health battle Clint Eastwood's son reveals shocking on-set spat with entitled Hollywood star: 'They think the world owes them' I thought my drinking was harmless until I realized I couldn't go a day without it. Then I discovered a $3 miracle pill that killed all my alcohol cravings... I'm completely cured I thought I knew the secret to great sex... then one man proved me so wrong: JANA HOCKING is mind-blown by trick that women over 40 are loving Hollywood nepo baby, 17, shows she has her father's unique style with edgy turn on red carpet... who is she? How well do you REALLY know America? Take our ultimate history quiz to find out... Stay-alert warnings issued as sharks return to one of America's busiest beaches Harry DOES want to bring Archie and Lili to the UK - but not without'proportionate protective security', team Sussex say: Duke and Duchess lay out demands after'state-funded guards turned down at 11th hour' Boy, 12, reveals how brother's quick thinking saved him from shark bite while on gorgeous Bahamas vacation Former FBI agent believes there's sinister motive behind new Nancy Guthrie ransom note... as desperation seeps in At 45 I was plagued by muscle pain, brain fog and memory loss... but it wasn't the menopause. I caught a disease while sitting on my sofa.

NFL great Chris Johnson reveals common first symptom of paralyzing ALS that's left him unable to speak or move: 'He thought it was a pinched nerve' Why Thylane Blondeau renounced her'most beautiful girl in the world' title after struggling with childhood honour - as she prepares to take on new name after marrying French DJ Ben Attal Stay-alert warnings issued as sharks return to one of America's busiest beaches I thought my drinking was harmless until I realized I couldn't go a day without it. Then I discovered a $3 miracle pill that killed all my alcohol cravings... I'm completely cured I thought I knew the secret to great sex... then one man proved me so wrong: JANA HOCKING is mind-blown by trick that women over 40 are loving How well do you REALLY know America? Take our ultimate history quiz to find out... Prince Harry vows to'explore every option to bring Archie and Lilibet to the UK' after hitting out at'bizarre decision' to deny armed security At 45 I was plagued by muscle pain, brain fog and memory loss... but it wasn't the menopause. I caught a disease while sitting on my sofa. I escaped Europe's dying democracies and discovered the real secret to America's enduring success: AYAAN HIRSI ALI Physical therapist who killed newborn and threw her in dumpster was finally snared 17 years later thanks to COSTCO receipt... as she's given incredibly light sentence for manslaughter I feel terrible saying my husband's penis isn't big enough for me.