New AI tool improves cognitive testing
One good piece of news in recent years is that people around the world are living longer. The downside to this news is that older age exposes more of us to varieties of cognitive decline, including Alzheimer’s disease. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, the number of people with this diagnosis is likely to grow from around 5 million today to some 13.5 million in 2050. What could help stem this tsunami of pending illness? A team from MIT and Lahey Hospital and Medical Center has created a tool that will make it easier to detect cognitive impairment, enabling treatment to begin earlier and, potentially, improve outcomes. Professor Randall Davis, an expert in knowledge-based systems and human-computer interaction at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), and Dana Penney, the director of neuropsychology in neurology at Lahey Hospital and Medical Center, have led research that improves a classic tool for diagnosis,...