EurekAlert! In the Spotlight

This month, we’re focusing on artificial intelligence (AI), a topic that continues to capture attention everywhere. Here, you’ll find the latest research news, insights, and discoveries shaping how AI is being developed and used across the world.

Scientists read mice’s ‘thoughts’ from their faces

Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown
Peer-Reviewed Publication

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

Journal: Nature Neuroscience

30-Sep-2025

From black box to glass box: AI explainability in stroke treatment

CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security
Business Announcement

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.

Funder: Helmholtz Association

30-Sep-2025

Nighttime driving study reveals red light reduces motion sickness in automated vehicles

ELSP
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Shanghai, September 2025 — Motion sickness is a major barrier to passenger comfort, particularly during nighttime journeys when visual cues are limited. A new study published in Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems (AIAS) provides experimental evidence that warm red in-vehicle lighting can significantly reduce motion sickness, compared with cool blue light or driving in darkness. The article, “Passenger motion sickness binary classification model and analysis of vehicle lighting intervention effect,” authored by Bin Ren*, Xiaoyuchen Wang, Pengyu Ren and Menghan Wu from Shanghai University, investigates how different ambient lighting conditions affect passenger comfort during real-road nighttime driving.

Journal: Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems

30-Sep-2025

KAIST develops semiconductor neuron that remembers and responds like the brain

The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)
Peer-Reviewed Publication

The human brain does more than simply regulate synapses that exchange signals; individual neurons also process information through “intrinsic plasticity,” the adaptive ability to become more sensitive or less sensitive depending on context. Existing artificial intelligence semiconductors, however, have struggled to mimic this flexibility of the brain. A KAIST research team has now developed next-generation, ultra-low-power semiconductor technology that implements this ability as well, drawing significant attention.

KAIST (President Kwang Hyung Lee) announced on September 28 that a research team led by Professor Kyung Min Kim of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering developed a “Frequency Switching Neuristor” that mimics “intrinsic plasticity,” a property that allows neurons to remember past activity and autonomously adjust their response characteristics.

Journal: Advanced Materials

Welcome to In the Spotlight, where each month we shine a light on something exciting, timely, or simply fascinating from the world of science.

Latest News Releases

Scientists read mice’s ‘thoughts’ from their faces

From black box to glass box: AI explainability in stroke treatment

Nighttime driving study reveals red light reduces motion sickness in automated vehicles

KAIST develops semiconductor neuron that remembers and responds like the brain

Unsupervised AI network separates wood and leaves in 3D forest scans

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