With artificial intelligence steadily infiltrating nearly every aspect of modern life, there is a healthy amount of skepticism about the outsize role of machine learning in life in the twenty-first century. For many, concerns over the implications of technologies such as facial recognition, online tracking of individual preferences, and robots assuming roles formerly filled by humans raise understandable alarm. Fortunately, the medical sector provides a powerful example of artificial intelligence being leveraged to support rather than compete with human intelligence. Generally speaking, our brain health remains somewhat of a black box until symptoms of cognitive decline present and our brain activity is finally monitored through advanced medical testing. While most of us visit our primary care physician at least once a year for a comprehensive review of our physical health, no such proactive mechanism currently exists with regard to our cognitive health.

I sat in a dark room, eyes closed, with a device strapped to my head that looked like a futuristic bike helmet. For 10 minutes, while I concentrated on not accidentally opening my eyes, the prongs sticking out of this gadget and onto my scalp measured a health marker I never thought to assess: my cognitive health. When I booked my brain wave recording (also known as electroencephalography, or EEG), I expected to pull up to an office park with medical clinic vibes, but instead my GPS led me to an ocean-view storefront decorated like a cross between a surf shop and a luxury spa, with a sign in the window promising "Mental Wellness, Reimagined." Located in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, a wealthy coastal town north of San Diego, Wave Neuroscience promises to help your brain perform better with a noninvasive treatment that uses magnets on the brain. We're talking mental clarity, improved focus and concentration, and even a shift in mood.

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. Physically taxing jobs can hinder one's cognitive health, potentially causing a person's brain to age faster and leave them with a poorer memory as they grow older, a new study suggests. In a study published in the Frontiers in Human Neuroscience in July, researchers surveyed nearly 100 cognitively healthy older adults between ages 60 and 80 years old in order to better understand how stress plays a role in how the human brain ages. Their analysis indicated that adults who reported having higher levels of physical stress in their most recent job were also people who had a smaller hippocampal volume and poorer memory performance. The hippocampus is commonly associated with memory.

People who regularly play non-digital games such as Bingo, chess, cards or crosswords in their 70s could enjoy better cognitive ability later in life, finds study. Psychologists at the University of Edinburgh found that those who routinely played the games scored better on memory and thinking tests than non-players. The team tested 1000 people aged 70 for memory, problem solving, thinking speed and general thinking ability - the same people were tested every three years until they reached 79. People who increased game playing from ages 70 to 76 were more likely to maintain certain thinking skills as they grew older. The study also found that a behaviour change in later life could still make a difference.

The ubiquity of smartphone usage in many people's lives make it a rich source of information about a person's mental and cognitive state. In this work we analyze 12 weeks of phone usage data from 113 older adults, 31 with diagnosed cognitive impairment and 82 without. We develop structured models of users' smartphone interactions to reveal differences in phone usage patterns between people with and without cognitive impairment. In particular, we focus on inferring specific types of phone usage sessions that are predictive of cognitive impairment. Our model achieves an AUROC of 0.79 when discriminating between healthy and symptomatic subjects, and its interpretability enables novel insights into which aspects of phone usage strongly relate with cognitive health in our dataset.

If you're intent on keeping dementia at bay, new research suggests you'll need more than crossword puzzles, aerobic exercise and an active social life. In a study released Sunday, researchers found that older adults who did exercises to shore up the speed at which they processed visual information could cut by nearly half their likelihood of cognitive decline or dementia over a 10-year period. The new clinical trial results, presented Sunday at the Alzheimer's Assn.'s International Conference in Toronto, establish specialized brain training as a potentially powerful strategy to prevent Alzheimer's Disease and other afflictions, including normal aging, that sap memory and reduce function. With 76 million baby boomers reaching the age of maximum vulnerability to Alzheimer's and with no effective treatments available to alter the disease's progression, researchers are keen to find ways to prevent or delay the onset of the memory-robbing disease. The new research suggests that even years after it is administered, an inexpensive intervention without unwanted side effects might forestall dementia symptoms.

Do you understand the relative impact that machine learning and predictive analytics can have over patient care? If you work in the healthcare industry, I'd suggest that you familiarize yourself with these technologies because working in this environment will soon be an unavoidable reality. This way of treatment with machine learning and predictive analytics is becoming more accepted in today's healthcare industry, but people are still more than 80% under water when it comes to a full-fledged understanding of these cutting edge solutions. There are thousands of healthcare IT companies all over the United States that insource and outsource the development of software and mobile ready applications to solve issues being faced in the technological age of EMRs. It's tough to turn a blind eye to the big named corporations like IBM, rolling out Watson, the machine learning powerhouse that is being implemented across multiple industries, including healthcare.