“Descending with his brother from the summit of Nanga Parbat, one of the ten highest mountains in the world, [Italian mountaineer] Reinhold Messner felt a third climber ‘descending with us, keeping a regular distance, a little to my right and a few steps away from me, just outside my field of vision’. Messner ‘could not see the figure’ but ‘was certain there was someone there,’ sensing ‘his presence’.

For this edition of the contest, 11 groundbreaking biomedical and health projects spearheaded by research institutions and universities in Portugal were selected. This funding underscores the commitment of the “la Caixa” Foundation to champion projects of unparalleled excellence that stand to significantly benefit public health.

Listed below is more information about the seven awardees from the four COLife institutes and their projects.

Artificial Intelligence is all around us, accelerating medical drug development, selecting what content we see across social media or outclassing us on the most human of tasks from driving to medical diagnoses. The transformational power of AI has the potential to alter our society as profoundly as the agricultural and industrial revolutions, but how did we get here?

What is intelligence, and why do we seek to replicate it artificially? 

When did the AI revolution begin, and can you recall your first encounter with AI? 

If a teacup is steaming, you’ll wait a bit longer before drinking from it. And if your fingers get caught in the door, you'll be more careful next time. These are forms of associative learning, where a positive or negative experience leads to learning behavior. We know that our cerebellum is important in this form of learning. But how exactly does this work?

On behalf of the Champalimaud Research Programme on Digital Therapeutics led by Dr. John Krakauer and Dr. Joe Paton, we'd like to invite you to the workshop on interactive AI systems. At Digital Therapeutics group, our mission is to leverage cutting-edge technology to create evidence-based, personalised medical interventions to prevent, manage, or treat a broad spectrum of physical, mental, and behavioural conditions.

In this audio interview, Gonçalo explains how this grant will fund ongoing work on Lesional Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) that is being developed in collaboration with several members of the Neuropsychiatry Unit. The proposal is to use the results from this work to test a new treatment for OCD through transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), which will include the Neuropsychiatry Unit’s first clinical trial using therapeutic TMS.
 

Listen to the full audio recording to find out more!

Through the provision of these two-year collaborative research grants, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) programme aims to accelerate cutting-edge research and technology in metabolism and metabolic physiology. The objective of these grants is to map, measure, and integrate metabolism across different scales—from molecules and organelles to cells and tissues—deepening our understanding of human biology, and to investigate the metabolic processes that maintain physiological homeostasis.

Understanding Treatment-Resistant Depression

Treatment-resistant depression (TRD) is a particularly challenging form of major depressive disorder. As Albino Oliveira-Maia, head of the Champalimaud Foundation’s Neuropsychiatry Unit and the study’s national coordinator for Portugal, explains, “TRD is defined as the persistence of depressive symptoms despite adequate courses of at least two different antidepressant medications”. Despite repeated therapeutic attempts, these patients’ depressive symptoms remain.

On October 1st, people in over 150 countries across the globe will celebrate the power of music to unite and contribute towards a more peaceful, joyful, and harmonious society during International Music Day. Here at the Champalimaud Foundation, we have several budding musicians, so we asked one of them to give us some insight into combining music with science.