The research team found that studying the causes of cognitive impairment by using an unbiased AI-based method — as opposed to traditional markers such as amyloid plaques — revealed unexpected microscopic abnormalities that can predict the presence of cognitive impairment.

“AI represents an entirely new paradigm for studying dementia and will have a transformative effect on research into complex brain diseases, especially Alzheimer’s disease,” said co-corresponding author John Crary, professor of pathology, molecular and cell-based medicine, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence and human health, at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

“The deep-learning approach was applied to the prediction of cognitive impairment, a challenging problem for which no current human-performed histopathologic diagnostic tool exists.”

The Mount Sinai team identified and analysed the underlying architecture and cellular features of two regions in the brain: the...