cognitive scientist awards

A novel study conducted at University Hospitals and the VA Northeast Ohio Healthcare System, through its Cleveland Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) Center, provides clues, as it shows that long-term dynamic exercise programs might have wider restorative effects on the brain signals of Parkinson’s Disease (PD) patients than researchers previously thought. Researchers used recordings from participants’ deep brain stimulation devices to try to assess how long-term exercise programs might be re-activating connections damaged by Parkinson’s Disease. Unlike previous studies, this investigation sought to decode the brain changes linked to motor symptom relief; both with the help of second-generation DBS devices and a long-term dynamic cycling exercise regimen in Parkinson’s patients. Details on the study are published in the June 2025 issue of  Clinical Neurophysiology . The pilot investigation, funded by a VA Merit Award from the Department of Veterans Affairs along with philanthr...

  A look at the critical capabilities data engineers must develop to stay relevant and valuable, as well as practical ways to sharpen those skills. Agentic AI is no longer a futuristic concept. It is rapidly becoming part of real-world production systems. According to a 2025 report from Capgemini, adoption of agentic AI is expected to grow by 48% by the end of this year, as early adopters of generative AI (GenAI) begin integrating autonomous agents into business operations. For data engineers, this shift brings both a challenge and an opportunity. Traditional pipelines that power reports or support batch-trained models are no longer enough. The next generation of AI systems requires real-time context and responsive pipelines that support autonomous decisions across distributed systems. You may already be skilled in extract, transform, load (ETL) scheduling, analytics queries or machine learning (ML) integration. But how well are you positioned to support agents ...

  Accumulating evidence supports a link between sleep disorders, disturbed sleep, and adverse brain health, ranging from stroke to subclinical cerebrovascular disease to cognitive outcomes, including the development of Alzheimer disease and Alzheimer disease–related dementias. Sleep disorders such as sleep-disordered breathing (eg, obstructive sleep apnea), and other sleep disturbances, as well, some of which are also considered sleep disorders (eg, insomnia, sleep fragmentation, circadian rhythm disorders, and extreme sleep duration), have been associated with adverse brain health.  Understanding the causal role of sleep disorders and disturbances in the development of adverse brain health is complicated by the common development of sleep disorders among individuals with neurodegenerative disease. In addition to the role of sleep disorders in stroke and cerebrovascular injury, mechanistic hypotheses linking sleep with brain health and biomarker data (blood-based, cerebrospina...

  From 1970 to 2022, deaths from heart attacks dropped by almost 90%, but more Americans now die from other types of heart disease, Stanford Medicine-led research has found. In 1970, someone over the age of 65 hospitalized for a heart attack in the United States had about a 60% chance of leaving the hospital alive. Today, the survival rate is over 90%, with even better outcomes for younger patients. Those numbers have contributed to a remarkable decrease in the likelihood of dying from any type of heart disease over the last 50 years, according to a new study of heart disease mortality led by Stanford Medicine researchers. In 1970, 41% of all deaths were attributed to ailments of the heart; in 2022, that statistic had dropped to 24% of all deaths.  Most strikingly, the proportion of deaths from acute myocardial infarctions — commonly known as heart attacks — fell nearly 90% during that period. The decrease is a testament to the leaps and bounds made in our ability to manage an...