Using AI to decode the ‘language’ of the brain

(TIMES OF ISRAEL) If the brain is our most important organ, why do most brain disorders such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) still rely on subjective diagnosis and treatment based on questionnaires and a taxing trial-and-error process?

For over six years, the co-inventor of Apple’s FaceID recognition system and an Israeli-American computational neuroscientist pursued this question as their quest to build an artificial intelligence model which they say promises to decode and understand the complex language of the brain.

After working under the radar, Gidi Littwin and Hagai Lalazar, the co-founders of Hemispheric have now come out with Descartes, which they say will be able to decipher the electrical activity of the human brain to help diagnose neurological and psychological conditions such as depression and PTSD.

Speaking to The Times of Israel, Littwin and Lalazar, respectively CTO and CEO of the Israeli startup, said that the Descartes AI model is trained to interpret the brain’s electrical signals, or language, in the same way large language models process the semantic meaning of text or computer vision systems interpret images.

“Our brain is the most complicated organ in our body, the largest disease burden, but we have no quantitative, non-invasive measurement of its function, of its health, and as a neuroscientist that really bothered me,” said Lalazar.