The University College London’s (UCL) Queen Square Institute for Neurology researchers have suggested that artificial intelligence (AI) language models could help diagnose schizophrenia.

Verbal fluency tasks were undertaken by 26 participants with schizophrenia and 26 control participants to determine how the automated analysis of language could assist doctors and scientists when diagnosing and assessing psychiatric conditions.

Affecting around 24 million people worldwide, schizophrenia is a debilitating and common psychiatric disorder that can cause hallucinations, delusions and behaviour changes.

Psychiatric diagnoses are currently based on talking to patients and those close to them and using limited tests, including blood tests and brain scans.

The verbal fluency tasks required participants to name as many words as possible in five minutes, in the context of ‘animals’ or words starting with the letter ‘p’.

After analysing the participants' answers, researchers tested whether their responses could be predicted by the AI model, which was trained on internet text to represent the meaning of words in human context, and whether predictability was reduced in schizophrenic patients.

Researchers discovered that control participant answers were more predictable by the AI model than those generated by participants with schizophrenia.

The team believe this difference could be linked to the way the brain learns relationships between memories and ideas by storing this information in cognitive maps.

Spencer Dayman Meningitis Research has announced that scientists at the University of Bristol have begun a research project to aid in the development of a vaccine against invasive group A streptococcus (iGAS).

The study will offer new and unique insights into the adaptive immune response to iGAS.

iGAS is a severe infection caused by bacteria invading parts of the body, including the blood, deep muscle, fat tissues or lungs, which can lead to diseases such as meningitis and sepsis.

Since April 2023, there have been 3,287 cases of iGAS in the UK, 761 of which occurred in children aged 18 years and under.

There is currently no vaccine to protect individuals from group A streptococcus, which can also cause rheumatic fever and scarlet fever.

Funded by Spencer Dayman Meningitis Research, scientists Dr Ana Goenka, Dr Alice Halliday and Dr Darryl Hill will use a new technique, the tonsil organoid model, to collect and grow cells from patients who had their tonsils surgically removed (tonsillectomy).

Tonsils are a key part of the body’s immune system, which helps fight infection.
After collecting the tonsils of patients, researchers will separate the cells to grow in a laboratory alongside different parts of the streptococcus A bacteria.