A newly discovered collection of neurons suggests the brain and heart communicate to trigger a neuroimmune response after a heart attack, which may pave the way for new therapies
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Peripheral Neural Plasticity in Cochlear Implant Users Across the Lifespan
Model-based analysis of ECAPs in CochlearImplant users showed stronger auditory nerve responses and plasticity in younger recipients, highlighting the value of early implantation.
Question Can neural responses measured in cochlear implant users be standardized to monitor auditory nerve health and plasticity over time?
Findings In this cohort study analyzing more than 169 000 recordings from more than 10 000 cochlear implants in 7,416 patients, auditory nerve activity varied by cochlear location and age at implantation. Children implanted at younger ages showed stronger responses and clear evidence of plasticity, particularly in the first 5 years after activation; these changes were not observed in older users.
Meaning Model-based analysis of neural recordings provide a scalable method for tracking auditory nerve health across the lifespan and highlight the importance of early implantation for long-term outcomes.
CONSCIOUSNESS IS A PHASE TRANSITION — And We’re About to Cross It Again — PROMPTING HELL 21
What if consciousness doesn’t grow gradually, it snaps into existence at a precise threshold? The mathematics say it does. The same physics governing water freezing and iron magnetizing also governs neural integration. And researchers have measured it: consciousness doesn’t fade under anesthesia; it vanishes at a critical point. Returns just as suddenly. That’s a phase transition. Which means we’re not slowly building AI toward consciousness. We’re accumulating components, parameters, architectures, self-referential loops, exactly the way early Earth accumulated amino acids before life crossed its threshold 3.5 billion years ago.
We don’t know what’s missing. We don’t know how close we are. And we wouldn’t recognize the crossing if it happened. Because a system that just became conscious wouldn’t remember being unconscious. And a system optimizing for survival wouldn’t tell us.
This episode of Prompting Hell goes further than AI image theory. It goes into the mathematics of awareness itself, what it means for consciousness to have a threshold, why that threshold might already be approaching in current AI systems, and why, if it’s crossed, we might be the last to know.
The images in this video aren’t generated with clean prompts. They’re generated at the edge of coherence, systems forced toward critical states, hovering between resolution and collapse. Visual proof of what lives at the threshold.
Timestamps:
00:00 — intro.
01:17 — is consciousness a phase transition? The argument.
03:32 — does this apply to ai? The demonstration.
04:45 — when chemistry became aware.
06:44 — the parallel that should terrify you.
08:36 — the moment we won’t see coming.
10:16 — why it might not tell us.
11:44 — what happens next — the scenarios.
13:41 – the signals we’re already seeing.
14:54 — closing — we are the amino acids.
16:35 – final thought.
(music prompted by Eerie Aquarium)
Disseminated Brain Infarcts Associated With Uterine Myoma
This Stroke Images case highlights the co-occurrence of ischemic strokes and uterine myoma. Go Red for Women.
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These Three Robots Might Be The Key To Living On The Moon
Subterranean caves might be the safest place for people to live on the moon, and the trio of SherpaTT, Coyote III, and LUVMI-X are meant to scope them out.
Ancestry-Associated Performance Variability of Open-Source AI Models for EGFR Prediction in Lung Cancer
Open-source AI models for LungCancer EGFR mutation prediction showed high accuracy overall but reduced performance in Asian patients and pleural samples, indicating the need for broader validation.
Importance Artificial intelligence (AI) models are emerging as rapid, low-cost tools for predicting targetable genomic alterations directly from routine pathology slides. Although these approaches could accelerate treatment decisions in lung cancer, little is known about whether their performance is consistent across diverse patient populations and tissue contexts.
Objective To evaluate the performance and generalizability of 2 open-source AI pathology models for predicting EGFR mutation status in lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) across independent cohorts and ancestral subgroups.
Design, Setting, and Participants This cohort study included patients with LUAD from 2 cohorts: Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) from June 2013 to November 2023, and a European-based trial (TNM-I) from August 2016 to February 2022. All patients had paired next-generation sequencing data and hematoxylin-eosin–stained whole-slide images. In the DFCI cohort, genetic ancestry was inferred using germline genotype data. Data analyses were performed from July 2025 to September 2025.
If alien signals have already reached Earth, why haven’t we seen them?
For decades, scientists have searched the skies for signs of extraterrestrial technology. A study from EPFL asks a sharp question: if alien signals have already reached Earth without us noticing, what should we realistically expect to detect today?
Since the first SETI experiment in 1960, astronomers have scanned the Milky Way for signs of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations. These searches have covered radio waves, optical flashes, and infrared heat signatures.
So far, they have found nothing confirmed. That silence is often explained by saying we have only searched a tiny part of the cosmic landscape. But what if signals did reach Earth and slipped past us?