Summary: “Mind reading” evokes images of futuristic scanners, but a study published in Nature Neuroscience demonstrates that a simple video may be enough. Using machine learning techniques, a team at the Champalimaud Foundation in Portugal, showed that mice’s facial movements reflect their hidden thoughts. According to the authors, this discovery could offer unprecedented insight into brain function, but also signals a need to consider safeguards for mental privacy. ***SUMMARY YOUTUBE VIDEO LINK***: https://youtu.be/eNjkmeJ-lvE

Liberate AI, an interdisciplinary project uniting researchers from the medical domain, computer science, and trustworthy artificial intelligence (AI), aims to develop an AI model capable of supporting doctors in the treatment of ischemic stroke. Serving as a digital assistance system, the AI model is intended to predict the long-term outcome of patients after mechanical thrombectomy, a minimally invasive treatment, as well as potential complications. Using a technology called Swarm Learning, the AI model will be trained in a privacy-preserving fashion on medical data residing at different sites across Germany. Further challenges addressed in the project include the AI’s explainability as well as its ability to make differentiated predictions for patient subgroups. Funded by the Helmholtz Association with 250,000 euros, Liberate AI is a joint project between Deutsches Zentrum für Neurodegenerative Erkrankungen (DZNE), the Department of Vascular Neurology at the University Hospital Bonn (UKB), and CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security.