A unique form of brain stimulation appears to boost people’s ability to remember new information—by mimicking the way our brains create memories.

The “memory prosthesis,” which involves inserting an electrode deep into the brain, also seems to work in people with memory disorders—and is even more effective in people who had poor memory to begin with, according to new research. In the future, more advanced versions of the memory prosthesis could help people with memory loss due to brain injuries or as a result of aging or degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, say the researchers behind the work.

…It works by copying what happens in the hippocampus—a seahorse-shaped region deep in the brain that plays a crucial role in memory. The brain structure not only helps us form short-term memories but also appears to direct memories to other regions for long-term storage. Read More

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said the company’s artificial intelligence technology is not anywhere near being sentient and may never get there, even as he touted A.I. as central to the $1.4 trillion company’s future.

“LaMDA is not sentient by any stretch of the imagination,” Pichai said during an onstage interview at Vox Media’s Code conference in Beverly Hills on Tuesday evening, referring to the name of one of Google’s A.I. technologies. Read More