(Yicai) Sept. 23 -- Microsoft Research Asia, US tech giant Microsoft’s research arm in the Asia-Pacific region, is linking arms with the Shanghai Mental Health Center to develop a multimodal artificial intelligence tool that can help Alzheimer's patients slow down cognitive decline.

The personalized cognitive training framework called ReMe is based on Microsoft's large language model development platform, Azure OpenAI, according to a press release published by Microsoft Research Asia on Sept. 21. It provides cognitive training experiences for patients in the form of a conversational chatbot, supporting text, image, and voice inputs and outputs.

This idea originated in April with the aim of quickly entering the clinical stage and targeting early-stage Alzheimer's patients, Qiu Lili, deputy director of Microsoft Research Asia, told Yicai. The institution is also exploring the use of wearable devices and wireless sensing technology to record important events in daily life, in order to facilitate more convenient personalized memory training, she added.

Alzheimer's disease is a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that predominantly affects elderly people. Patients experience an irreversible decline in memory and cognitive function. There are no medications available at present that can cure the disease, but early diagnosis and proactive intervention can help slow this decline.

Cognitive training is an effective means of alleviating Alzheimer's disease, but existing software-driven training is relatively monotonous and the breadth of training is limited, said Yue Ling, deputy chief physician of the geriatrics department at Shanghai Mental Health Center. It mainly focuses on training the working memory and does not significantly aid patients' episodic memory and semantic memory.

The intelligent and personalized characteristics of multimodal large models offer new possibilities for cognitive training, making them more closely aligned with daily life, said Yue. Next, the Shanghai Mental Health Center will design new training methods based on ReMe and conduct a series of rigorous clinical trials to verify their effectiveness, she added.

Microsoft Research Asia envisions applying multimodal large models across a broader range of areas in the future, including emotional regulation, habit improvement and autism treatment. Ultimately, these models will help improve the health of patients with mental illnesses in community and home settings, thereby reducing the burden on caregivers and family members.

Editors: Dou Shicong, Kim Taylor