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Supercomputers could do what meatbags can't do: label meatbags as depressed by analyzing thousands of voxels:
Depression affects more than 15 million American adults, or about 6.7 percent of the U.S. population, each year. It is the leading cause of disability for those between the ages of 15 and 44. Is it possible to detect who might be vulnerable to the illness before its onset using brain imaging? David Schnyer, a cognitive neuroscientist and professor of psychology at The University of Texas at Austin, believes it may be. But identifying its tell-tale signs is no simpler[sic] matter. He is using the Stampede supercomputer at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) to train a machine learning algorithm that can identify commonalities among hundreds of patients using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) brain scans, genomics data and other relevant factors, to provide accurate predictions of risk for those with depression and anxiety.
[...] In the recent study, Schnyer analyzed brain data from 52 treatment-seeking participants with depression, and 45 heathy control participants. To compare the two, a subset of depressed participants was matched with healthy individuals based on age and gender, bringing the sample size to 50.
Evaluating the diagnostic utility of applying a machine learning algorithm to diffusion tensor MRI measures in individuals with major depressive disorder (open, DOI: 10.1101/061119) (DX) (alt)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 31 2017, @06:04AM (4 children)
And they want me to take you to the bridge.
Marvin, the Paranoid Android, is a fictional character in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams. Marvin is the ship's robot aboard the starship Heart of Gold. Originally built as one of many failed prototypes of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation's GPP (Genuine People Personalities) technology, Marvin is afflicted with severe depression and boredom, in part because he has a "brain the size of a planet"[1] which he is seldom, if ever, given the chance to use. Indeed, the true horror of Marvin's existence is that no task he could be given would occupy even the tiniest fraction of his vast intellect. Marvin claims he is 50,000 times more intelligent than a human,[2] (or 30 billion times more intelligent than a live mattress) though this is, if anything, a vast underestimation.
We know how you feel, Marvin, what with the pain running down the diodes on your left side. But do you understand? Only with great intelligence comes great depression, and this is why suicides are up on Sirius Cybernetics systems and at the same time in the American midwest! Oh, only now do you see the connection! You poor, pathetic, way south of the midwest and so less prone to depression and suicide Arkansans!!!!!!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 31 2017, @06:50AM (3 children)
(illogical language constructs, a major cause of depression.
Why Arkansans and not "Arkansasans" or "Arkansasians" or "Arkansasurians" or "Arkansasents" or "Arkansasiliots"? The state isn't called Arkans)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 31 2017, @03:00PM
It's not illogical. That's what they do for Texans and Kansans as well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 31 2017, @03:51PM (1 child)
Why
You must be new to human languages. I haven't met a human language yet that isn't chock full of irregularities.
I think they've tried a few times with Esperanto and Lojban, but nobody speaks those.
This makes coming up with fictional (for the purposes of fiction as opposed to Esperanto and Lojban) languages like Klingon, Elvish, or Xi'an all the more fun. Though people without as much experience in language often start out incorrectly and can be wet blankets by trying to design a language with a completely self-consistent grammar and lexicon.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 31 2017, @07:12PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto [wikipedia.org]
It has more speakers than some "real" languages.