Surgeon Abraham Shaked thinks he has probably carried out more than 2,500 liver transplants. But in December 2023, the team he oversees at the University of Pennsylvania did something he'd never tried before. Working on the body of a brain-dead man, they attached his veins to a refrigerator-size machine with a pig liver mounted in the middle of it. For three days, the man's blood passed into the machine, through the pig liver, and back into his body. This "extracorporeal," or outside-the-body, liver is designed to help people survive acute liver failure.

Scientists are tasking a language-processing Artificial Intelligence (AI) with detecting and diagnosing the early signs of language-associated cognitive impairments in people with failing livers. In their findings, the researchers report finding evidence that this cognitive function is likely to be restored following a liver transplant. In their paper, published in the journal npj Digital Medicine (formerly Nature Digital Medicine), the researchers explained how they used natural language processing (NPL) to evaluate electronic message samples from patients with chronic liver failure. This disease is associated with transient cognitive abnormalities. These include diminished attention spans, loss of memory, and a reduced ability for an individual to detect and respond to their surroundings.

Natural language processing, the technology that lets computers read, decipher, understand and make sense of human language, is the driving force behind internet search engines, email filters, digital assistants such as Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri, and language-to-language translation apps. Now, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers say they have given this technology a new job as a clinical detective, diagnosing the early and subtle signs of language-associated cognitive impairments in patients with failing livers. They also report finding evidence that cognitive functioning is likely to be restored following a liver transplant. In a new paper in the journal npj Digital Medicine (formerly Nature Digital Medicine), the researchers describe how they used natural language processing, or NLP, to evaluate electronic message samples from patients with end-stage liver disease (ESLD), also known as chronic liver failure. ESLD has been associated with transient cognitive abnormalities such as diminished attention span, loss of memory and reduced psychomotor speed, an individual's ability to detect and respond to the world around them.