Letters to the Editor: Some AI models actually are learning how to solve problems like humans do
Humans (and other animals) learn most of our important behaviors through reinforcement, the foundational law of learning first suggested by psychologist Edward Thorndike's Law of Effect and later experimentally investigated and confirmed by the behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner and his colleagues.
In addition, verbal humans frequently solve problems by talking (and imagining) to ourselves until we find a solution. Reinforcement plays a critical role in learning and engaging in problem-solving behavior. Reasoning LL models of AI that are also programmed to learn through reinforcement mimic such problem-solving behaviors in humans and are now among the most powerful AI machines.
Unfortunately, along the way, Gefen ventures beyond his expertise as a neuroscientist and mischaracterizes 'behaviorist psychology.' If he looked deeper, however, he would find that behavioral psychologists have discovered laws of behavior that have revolutionized the treatment of a wide range of behavior disorders, as well as revolutionizing education. They now provide the foundation for a whole new generation of AI machines that think and learn like humans.
Henry D. Schlinger Jr., GlendaleThis writer is a professor of psychology at Cal State Los Angeles.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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National Geographic
3 days ago
- National Geographic
‘Superagers' seem to share this one key personality trait
The brains of superagers are different from the rest of us. Here's what 25 years of research reveals about why some people remain sharp well into their 80s and 90s. There's no one lifestyle linked to staying impressively sharp as you age—but a new study suggests there is at least one personality trait: gregariousness. Brain scans and post-mortem examinations of superagers reveal several differences that may explain their outgoing behavior. Photograph by Britt Erlanson, Getty Images What if you could stay sharp in old age? We may be closer to understanding how some people over 80 became what's known as 'superagers'—meaning they have the cognitive function of someone decades younger. In a new paper published in the journal Alzheimer's & Dementia, researchers at Northwestern University reveal what they've learned in the last 25 years of studying more than a hundred superagers—and analyzing some 77 post-mortem superager brains. The new paper shows that the brains of superagers share a host of characteristics that may allow them to retain their cognitive function. And while there's still much to understand about whether lifestyle choices play a role, researchers did observe one personality trait that all superagers seem to share: they're sociable. (Can aging be cured? Scientists are giving it a try.) The findings further contributed to developing a 'distinct neurobiological signature' for identifying superagers: You might be one if you're 80 or older and can recall at least nine words about 30 minutes after someone reads you a 15-word list. Eventually, this research could build the foundation for future neurodegenerative disease interventions. 'One creative and novel way to understand or prevent Alzheimer's disease is to study those that don't get it,' says Tamar Gefen, a study author and assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University. That's why superagers are so fascinating, she says. 'Their memories are just outstanding even compared to their peers.' Superagers are outgoing—and tenacious You might not be able to control the characteristics of your brain. But the Northwestern researchers have studied whether there are any lifestyle or personality traits that superagers share, and just one trait stood out—gregariousness. 'These are people living life on their own terms,' Gefen says. Whether that means volunteering in communities, or having 'multiple romantic partners,' as some study participants did, it's clear superagers are connected by their values of autonomy and connection, adds Gefen. Her team found potential biological underpinnings for these differences. The study shows superagers have more of a certain type of neurons associated with sociability compared to their peers—and surprisingly, more of these neurons than people much younger. Known as von Economo neurons, they are found in the anterior cingulate gyrus of the brain, which plays a role in emotion and cognitive processing. (7 simple science-backed rules for living longer.) 'You really only find these in species that are social, like whales,' says Joel Kramer, a professor of neuropsychology at the University of California, San Francisco. His team is currently studying frontotemporal dementia patients, and so far found a 'striking loss' of von Economo neurons in those who are less empathetic. Indeed, the study notes these neurons have been found in emotional and social animals like great apes, elephants, and cetaceans like whales or dolphins. Animals 'that have strong connections tend to outlive and outsmart their peers. It's like the pack culture,' Gefen says. Having a thicker anterior cingulate gyrus also suggests superagers are more tenacious. This is a region that is 'traditionally not associated with memory, but motivation,' says Alexandra Touroutoglou, an assistant professor of neurology who also studies superagers at Harvard University. 'This may reflect that superagers may be more willing to exert effort in the face of challenges.' Northwestern researchers Sandra Weintraub and Marsel Mesulam founded the SuperAging Research Program more than 25 years ago after they examined a post-mortem brain of an 81-year-old woman with the cognitive function of someone in her 50s that they had received from the University of Miami's Miami Brain Endowment Bank. This finding challenged the prevalent idea that severe cognitive decline is unavoidable with age. Fast forward decades later, and Northwestern has built up a brain bank of its own with 77 post-mortem brains, says Gefen, which she finds particularly exciting, as autopsy is considered the gold standard for identifying the causes and progression of disease. (When does old age begin? Science says later than you might think.) One key finding from the study is that cortical thinning, or brain shrinkage, in superagers is much slower than their peers—which may explain why they're less prone to neurodegeneration associated with conditions from dementia to Parkinson's disease. Over an 18-month period, superager cortical thickness was reduced by 1.06 percent, while peers' reduced by 2.24 percent. The researchers speculate in the paper that superagers could have been born with bigger brains; however, that 'is unlikely to be the entire answer given the absence of obvious differences in skull morphology.' Additionally, superagers had a more robust cholinergic system, a neurotransmitter system associated with memory, learning, and motor function. Cholinergic neurons in the basal forebrain are thought to be among the first to show degeneration as you age. They communicate with each other via the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, which is important for alertness, explains Kramer. For example, Kramer says the reason why you might feel 'a little dopey and not so sharp' when you take anti-seasickness medication is because it reduces acetylcholine. On the other hand, modern dementia therapeutics like donepezil slow the breakdown of acetylcholine by inhibiting an enzyme, acetylcholinesterase, thus making you less forgetful. The Northwestern study found that among participants' acetylcholinesterase-rich neurons, superagers had less of the enzyme than their peers. This may suggest acetylcholine degrades slower among superagers, and possibly make them more resistant to worsening memory. Superager brains may also be more resistant to the changes in the brain linked to Alzheimer's. An autopsy of a 92-year-old superager in the Northwestern study showed prominent neurofibrillary tangles, a hallmark of the disease. But the superager also had a 'much greater' amount of viable, healthy neurons, which could play a 'decisive role' in memory. 'This is an important finding, because it underscores that superagers may not avoid all pathological age-related brain changes,' Touroutoglou says. 'It also shows the viable neurons may play an important role that has not been studied.' Does lifestyle make a difference? Surprisingly, the study found little difference between the cognitive performance of superagers who lived healthy lifestyles—i.e. ate well and exercised—and those who did the opposite. Still, this should be interpreted with caution, experts say. Because this isn't a controlled longitudinal study that started when people were young, 'you cannot completely know whether these sorts of behaviors are helping or not,' Gefen says. Further, other research suggests that lifestyle does indeed play a role. In 2024, for example, a commission from The Lancet estimated that up to 45 percent of dementia cases may be preventable if people adopt regular exercise or abstain from excess intoxication. 'I think it's absolutely true lifestyle matters. There's too much evidence,' Kramer says. 'The question is not, 'does everyone have to exercise?' The question is, 'if exercise and lifestyle don't explain everything, what are other things that explain this?'' Maybe it's genetics. But when it comes to superagers, currently 'we have more questions than answers,' Kramer says. Fortunately, researchers are working on this. Gefen is especially excited about the new discoveries the Northwestern brain bank may bring; for example, her team is investigating what makes von Economo neurons special and their role in disease resistance. 'You can just imagine what the future holds in that SuperAging brain bank.'
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Yahoo
New research reveals clues to memory and longevity from the brains of 'SuperAgers'
Sel Yackley is a busy woman. She makes jewelry, sings in a choir and knits hats and scarves for the homeless. She also reads with her book club, goes to the gym a few times a week and is active in several civic organizations. According to her Fitbit, she still manages to sleep an average of 7½ hours a night. At 85, Yackley is a 'SuperAger.' That is, someone who is 80 or older and retains the memory capacity — based on delayed word recall testing — of a person at least two to three decades younger. Dr. M. Marsel Mesulam, who founded the Mesulam Center for Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in the late 1990s, first defined a SuperAger. Mesulam Center researchers reflected on a quarter-century of SuperAger study in an analysis published Thursday in Alzheimer's & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association. Yackley, who is among the nearly 300 people who have participated in the Northwestern University SuperAging Program (NUSAP) since 2000, is proof that impaired memory isn't always a hallmark of aging. 'We are going to be role models for other people who are getting older,' she said. 'Take good care of your health and eat right and be sociable.' Is SuperAging genetic? Yackley, a longtime Chicagoan who hails from Turkey, acknowledges that genetic factors may be contributing to her youthful cognition. Her mother and father lived to be 86 and 88, respectively. On the other hand, Yackley feels her joie de vivre helps keep her mind sharp. 'I think it's partly your determination to live a long life and your activities that enable you to do so,' she said, encouraging older adults to pursue 'things that make you proud.' Yackley's peers in the SuperAger program share a spirit of connection, according to Tamar Gefen, a co-author of the analysis and an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Feinberg School. 'I don't know if it's necessarily social connections, it's just connections in general,' Gefen said. 'There are people who are connected to the land, there are people who are connected to their ancestry, people who are connected to their grandchildren, who are connected to their art.' Gefen added, 'You don't see a lot of detached SuperAgers.' That said, people can't simply will themselves into 'superaging.' More than 7 million people in the U.S. are living with Alzheimer's disease, according to the Alzheimer's Association, a statistic that's projected to soar to nearly 13 million by 2050. About 1 in 9 people 65 and older have this most common form of dementia. At age 45, the lifetime risk of developing Alzheimer's is 1 in 5 for women and 1 in 10 for men. SuperAgers are defying these odds. 'Genetics is a part of it, definitely,' Gefen said. 'We know that there are major risk genes for Alzheimer's disease, and SuperAgers don't have those genes.' For example, research has shown that people of European descent with two copies of a gene called APOE4 have a 60% chance of developing Alzheimer's by age 85. 'My interest is, are there genes that SuperAgers harbor that can actually protect them against getting Alzheimer's disease?' Gefen said. 'And is there a gene, let's say that's related to the immune system, that is over-expressed in SuperAgers that can be manipulated to then help individuals protect themselves?' As she continues searching for such answers, Gefen said her team's most exciting findings have stemmed from the brains of SuperAgers who have died. SuperAgers' brains may be built differently Gefen and her colleagues at the Mesulam Center have autopsied nearly 80 SuperAger brains and compared them to those of their 'neurotypical' peers. They focused on two indicators of Alzheimer's: protein buildups in the brain called amyloid plaques and tau tangles. 'What we found in memory centers of the SuperAging brain is that there are a lot fewer tau tangles,' Gefen said. 'But interestingly, amyloid or plaque pathology doesn't really differ a whole lot.' Because a number of Alzheimer's treatments single out amyloid plaques, SuperAgers bring such treatment methods into question, Gefen said: 'Are we really targeting the right target if SuperAgers and their peers have similar amounts of amyloid?' Other findings include that SuperAgers tend to have larger entorhinal neurons, which are nerve cells that are key to memory, and more von Economo neurons, which are nerve cells critical to social behavior. 'Our guess is that [SuperAgers] are probably born with these kinds of structural protections,' Gefen said. 'But we're now going really deep into the molecular mechanisms of the cell in order to figure out what is keeping that cell strong.' Dr. Timothy Chang, who wasn't involved in the SuperAger research, works on the opposite end of the spectrum. An assistant professor of neurology at the Mary S. Easton Center for Alzheimer's Research and Care at UCLA, Chang studies and sees patients who have dementia. Analyzing 'outlier populations' such as SuperAgers is valuable to the medical field, he said. 'Those cases are really interesting,' Chang said. 'They can teach us a lot about how, potentially, those people, based on genetics or other lifestyle factors, were able to avoid the disease.' SuperAgers live on in the lab Yackley has toured Northwestern's Brain Bank, where she is 'proud' her own brain will one day be sent for study. She's also making plans to donate the rest of her body to science. 'Hopefully, maybe my heart or my kidneys can be used for transplanting,' Yackley said. 'I don't want to be underground.' In the meantime, Yackley would be grateful to make it to 90, she said. She maintains a to-do list and aims to log about 4,200 steps a day. The retired journalist, travel agent and memoir author is already at work on her next undertaking. 'I am trying to put together a scrapbook of my life, and that's a big project,' Yackley said. Though the prevalence of SuperAgers is unclear, they appear to be uncommon. Gefen and her co-authors noted that during the initial recruitment of study participants, just 10% met the criteria of SuperAgers. Today, 101 SuperAgers ranging in age from 81 through 111 are actively involved in Mesulam Center research. Not all SuperAgers prioritize their health — on the contrary, some defiantly savor their vices — and many have lived difficult lives, Gefen said. But they don't take their cognitive fitness for granted. 'These SuperAgers know that they have a gift,' Gefen said. This article was originally published on Solve the daily Crossword
NBC News
7 days ago
- NBC News
New research reveals clues about memory from the brains of 'SuperAgers'
Sel Yackley is a busy woman. She makes jewelry, sings in a choir and knits hats and scarves for the homeless. She also reads with her book club, goes to the gym a few times a week and is active in several civic organizations. According to her Fitbit, she still manages to sleep an average of 7½ hours a night. At 85, Yackley is a 'SuperAger.' That is, someone who is 80 or older and retains the memory capacity — based on delayed word recall testing — of a person at least two to three decades younger. Dr. M. Marsel Mesulam, who founded the Mesulam Center for Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in the late 1990s, first defined a SuperAger. Mesulam Center researchers reflected on a quarter-century of SuperAger study in an analysis published Thursday in Alzheimer's & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association. Yackley, who is among the nearly 300 people who have participated in the Northwestern University SuperAging Program (NUSAP) since 2000, is proof that impaired memory isn't always a hallmark of aging. 'We are going to be role models for other people who are getting older,' she said. 'Take good care of your health and eat right and be sociable.' Is SuperAging genetic? Yackley, a longtime Chicagoan who hails from Turkey, acknowledges that genetic factors may be contributing to her youthful cognition. Her mother and father lived to be 86 and 88, respectively. On the other hand, Yackley feels her joie de vivre helps keep her mind sharp. 'I think it's partly your determination to live a long life and your activities that enable you to do so,' she said, encouraging older adults to pursue 'things that make you proud.' Yackley's peers in the SuperAger program share a spirit of connection, according to Tamar Gefen, a co-author of the analysis and an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Feinberg School. 'I don't know if it's necessarily social connections, it's just connections in general,' Gefen said. 'There are people who are connected to the land, there are people who are connected to their ancestry, people who are connected to their grandchildren, who are connected to their art.' Gefen added, 'You don't see a lot of detached SuperAgers.' That said, people can't simply will themselves into 'superaging.' More than 7 million people in the U.S. are living with Alzheimer's disease, according to the Alzheimer's Association, a statistic that's projected to soar to nearly 13 million by 2050. About 1 in 9 people 65 and older have this most common form of dementia. At age 45, the lifetime risk of developing Alzheimer's is 1 in 5 for women and 1 in 10 for men. SuperAgers are defying these odds. 'Genetics is a part of it, definitely,' Gefen said. 'We know that there are major risk genes for Alzheimer's disease, and SuperAgers don't have those genes.' For example, research has shown that people of European descent with two copies of a gene called APOE4 have a 60% chance of developing Alzheimer's by age 85. 'My interest is, are there genes that SuperAgers harbor that can actually protect them against getting Alzheimer's disease?' Gefen said. 'And is there a gene, let's say that's related to the immune system, that is over-expressed in SuperAgers that can be manipulated to then help individuals protect themselves?' As she continues searching for such answers, Gefen said her team's most exciting findings have stemmed from the brains of SuperAgers who have died. SuperAgers' brains may be built differently Gefen and her colleagues at the Mesulam Center have autopsied nearly 80 SuperAger brains and compared them to those of their 'neurotypical' peers. They focused on two indicators of Alzheimer's: protein buildups in the brain called amyloid plaques and tau tangles. 'What we found in memory centers of the SuperAging brain is that there are a lot fewer tau tangles,' Gefen said. 'But interestingly, amyloid or plaque pathology doesn't really differ a whole lot.' Because a number of Alzheimer's treatments single out amyloid plaques, SuperAgers bring such treatment methods into question, Gefen said: 'Are we really targeting the right target if SuperAgers and their peers have similar amounts of amyloid?' Other findings include that SuperAgers tend to have larger entorhinal neurons, which are nerve cells that are key to memory, and more von Economo neurons, which are nerve cells critical to social behavior. 'Our guess is that [SuperAgers] are probably born with these kinds of structural protections,' Gefen said. 'But we're now going really deep into the molecular mechanisms of the cell in order to figure out what is keeping that cell strong.' Dr. Timothy Chang, who wasn't involved in the SuperAger research, works on the opposite end of the spectrum. An assistant professor of neurology at the Mary S. Easton Center for Alzheimer's Research and Care at UCLA, Chang studies and sees patients who have dementia. Analyzing 'outlier populations' such as SuperAgers is valuable to the medical field, he said. 'Those cases are really interesting,' Chang said. 'They can teach us a lot about how, potentially, those people, based on genetics or other lifestyle factors, were able to avoid the disease.' SuperAgers live on in the lab Yackley has toured Northwestern's Brain Bank, where she is 'proud' her own brain will one day be sent for study. She's also making plans to donate the rest of her body to science. 'Hopefully, maybe my heart or my kidneys can be used for transplanting,' Yackley said. 'I don't want to be underground.' In the meantime, Yackley would be grateful to make it to 90, she said. She maintains a to-do list and aims to log about 4,200 steps a day. The retired journalist, travel agent and memoir author is already at work on her next undertaking. 'I am trying to put together a scrapbook of my life, and that's a big project,' Yackley said. Though the prevalence of SuperAgers is unclear, they appear to be uncommon. Gefen and her co-authors noted that during the initial recruitment of study participants, just 10% met the criteria of SuperAgers. Today, 101 SuperAgers ranging in age from 81 through 111 are actively involved in Mesulam Center research. Not all SuperAgers prioritize their health — on the contrary, some defiantly savor their vices — and many have lived difficult lives, Gefen said. But they don't take their cognitive fitness for granted. 'These SuperAgers know that they have a gift,' Gefen said.
