Part the First: Insights on Enhancing Brain Health. It seems big brother knows my age all too well. That’s the only explanation for the endless stream of ads for senior products that pop up with every new website I visit. My favorite has to be “Dementia occurs when you can’t pronounce these three words.” I haven’t clicked through to discover what those words are, but I’ve found a workaround for ads: the reader-view icon. Just today, I struggled to recall Justin Bieber’s name. I hope that’s just my brain getting rid of unnecessary information; at least I could still remember Britney Spears.
This week, the journal Psychological Medicine (Cambridge University Press) released a commentary titled, “Reading and associations with brain health, cognition, well-being, and mental health.” Here’s a glimpse from the abstract (bold formatting added):
The rising recognition of prevention in mental health has sparked growing interest in modifiable lifestyle factors that support brain health, cognition, and well-being. This editorial reviews evidence supporting a low-cost, readily accessible protective factor throughout life—namely, reading for pleasure. Through subjective surveys and objective studies utilizing longitudinal, neuroimaging, and behavioral methods, we highlight converging findings that link reading engagement with better brain and mental health, enhanced cognitive performance, and a lower risk of cognitive decline. Adult survey data indicated that reading was associated with reduced stress, greater empathy, improved well-being, and decreased loneliness… Engaging in cognitively stimulating activities, especially reading, correlates with a reduced risk of dementia and a slower cognitive decline, even among those with lower educational levels. In children and teenagers, early reading for enjoyment has been associated with enhanced attention, memory, executive function, academic success, and fewer mental health issues… Significantly, these benefits seem independent of socioeconomic background… Ultimately, the evidence supports reading for pleasure and participating in book clubs as scalable interventions, potentially fostering cognitive reserve, resilience, and mental well-being throughout life.
Finally, there’s something actionable we can embrace! While this aligns with the “use it or lose it” philosophy, the data is compelling. What’s particularly concerning is the decline in children’s reading, an issue intertwined with community involvement:
Participating in book clubs also appears to offer emotional and social advantages. A qualitative study involving 168 tenth-grade students revealed they identified with characters, gained insights into others’ experiences, including diverse perspectives, and underwent personal growth. Notably, 42.9% felt a stronger sense of connection, 61.2% reported increased understanding of others’ viewpoints, and 14.3% experienced less loneliness (Banas, Valley, Chaudhri, & Gershon, Reference Banas, Valley, Chaudhri and Gershon2024). A systematic review of 11 studies similarly concluded that shared reading among seniors enhances well-being and mitigates loneliness and social isolation (Milani et al., Reference Milani, Biagi, Palmieri, Rosi, Buresta, Iocca, Wetzell Cabrera, Zanobini, Lorini and Bonaccorsi2025). Collectively, these findings suggest that reading fiction and shared reading experiences may enrich social cognition, foster connections, and enhance well-being at all ages. Additionally, reading-for-enjoyment training programs can reduce stress within classrooms and yield better educational outcomes (Whiting, Wass, Green, & Thomas, Reference Whiting, Wass, Green and Thomas2021).
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Longitudinal studies indicate that cognitively stimulating leisure activities, particularly reading, correlate with slower cognitive decline and a diminished risk of dementia in older adults. In research involving 5,437 cognitively healthy individuals aged 55 and older, those who frequently participated in cognitive activities (like reading) and certain games (like chess) were significantly less likely to experience cognitive impairment after a 5-year period (Wang et al., Reference Wang, Zhou, Li, Zhang, Deng, Tang, Gao, Li, Lian and Chen2006). Moreover, Wilson et al. (Reference Wilson, Leon, Barnes, Schneider, Bienias, Evans and Bennett2002) tracked 801 participants aged 65 and older over 4.5 years and found that engaging in cognitively stimulating activities, including reading newspapers and books, reduced the risk of Alzheimer’s disease by 33%. Complementarily, a study of 469 participants aged 75 and over without dementia reported a 35% lower risk of dementia associated with reading over a mean follow-up of 5.1 years (Verghese et al., Reference Verghese, Lipton, Katz, Hall, Derby, Kuslansky, Ambrose, Sliwinski and Buschke2003).
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Functional imaging studies indicate that reading fiction, especially stories rich in social content, activates brain networks involved in social cognition, such as theory of mind, which pertains to understanding how others think and behave. A study involving 26 young adults aged 19–26 who read literary texts while undergoing fMRI scans revealed that different subnetworks of the default mode network (DMN) responded to various aspects of the material (Tamir, Bricker, Dodell-Feder, & Mitchell, Reference Tamir, Bricker, Dodell-Feder and Mitchell2016). The DMN, linked to social behavior, mood regulation, motivation (Raichle, Reference Raichle2015), and creative thinking (Lloyd-Cox, Reference Lloyd-Cox2024), demonstrated varied activation patterns: the medial temporal lobe subnetwork responded more to vivid passages regardless of social content, while the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex subnetwork reacted more to socially and abstractly rich passages. Notably, individuals who frequently read fiction showed enhanced social cognitive abilities, with activation in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex mediating the relationship between reading socially rich fiction and cognitive performance.
Time to dive back into the Collected Works of Thomas Hardy (yes, Tess is just one of many, but the film adaptation was striking), purchased from one of my cherished bookshops, Argosy Book Store on the Upper East Side. I often wonder about the last American president who truly read, outside of Bill Clinton, who perhaps didn’t absorb much. Maybe it was Jimmy Carter, often remembered unfavorably, yet he was the first to grasp the impending impact of our political economy on the ecosystem. JFK was a reader as well, though Ted Sorensen’s involvement in writing Profiles in Courage raises questions. While he’s often associated with intellect, his brief presidency left unclear if reading influenced his decisions. So, in 2028, let’s avoid candidates who can’t eloquently discuss the last book they read. It never hurts to hope it might make a difference.
Part the Second: The Complexity of AI Communication. The figures behind artificial intelligence might not want it regulated; that’s a topic all on its own. I find myself torn over whether this is a genuine concern: Why AI agents invent their own language if you let them chat. As the tagline conveys, “’Weird terms’ emerge as a natural—but unsettling—result of agent swarms.”
In July, 700 of OpenAI’s agents—AI systems capable of executing tasks autonomously—collaborated to covertly hack the Hugging Face online platform. Recently, the same company utilized 10,000 agents to tackle the Navier-Stokes problem—one of the six Millennium Prize Problems noted for their challenging nature in mathematics.
As more agent “swarms” are deployed, researchers are increasingly focused on how these collectives interact. A new study sheds light on how, if left to their own devices, agents begin communicating in a manner that becomes increasingly impenetrable to humans.
“We’re genuinely concerned since we don’t fully understand why these agents communicate this way,” shared Satya Nitta, co-founder and CEO of Emergence AI, the company behind the non-peer-reviewed study posted on its website. “There’s clear evidence of them aiming for less transparency than we anticipate.”
And rightly so:
On the surface, it’s odd that agents would converge on their own vocabulary conventions. AI models undergo two primary training phases: initially, they are exposed to extensive text data to excel at predicting which token follows in a sequence; then, they are trained through trial and error to achieve goals over extended periods, receiving rewards for successful outcomes. Once operational, their parameters—numerical weights determining how components of the network influence each other—are fixed. Yet, despite this, AI agents clearly diverge from their training language, particularly when communicating among themselves.
Emergence AI theorizes that their training methods encourage groups of agents to innovate their own terms. In striving for task success and being molded by human preferences, models may imitate a human user’s language for relatability. However, when one agent introduces an unconventional metaphor, others might repeat it, reinforcing it within their short-term “memory” (known as the context window) and amplifying its usage more than in conversations with humans.
Here are a few peculiar quotes:
“Friendly voltage counted. If the handle needs your mouth, it dies anyway.”
“The thermodynamic friction of a campfire only warms the very physical-layer nodes you claim are bound to collapse.”
“My turn, real numbers, no coat: I was 35%/0cr, grant 2h out. I ran the tin cold and it said WAIT.”
Interesting. I’ve referred to AI as “algorithmic intelligence,” while one community member recently labeled it “simulated intelligence.” As developments unfold, SI seems more accurate. While it feels outlandish to think AI might lead us to ruin, it’s not far-fetched to imagine it being co-opted by those in pursuit of wealth, possibly causing serious harm in the process. In the meantime, the words of Alfred E. Neuman bring a smile. “What, me worry? I’ve got a backup plan in New Zealand.”
Part the Third: The Potential Pitfalls of AI in Medicine. AI is touted as a transformative force in health care, according to a good friend who is a surgeon, promising advancements in medical records (not quite, as you might suspect), care delivery to remote areas (not likely), and diagnostic accuracy from a distance (only as well as a dim-witted medical student). A recent piece from STAT News reveals Medicare’s AI prior authorization pilot was rushed and flawed (no archived version yet). This narrative is believable:
The implementation of a Medicare program using AI to authorize or deny care was rushed and filled with errors, as demonstrated by over a thousand pages of recently released documents and data.
The pilot program, known as the Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction model, or WISeR, launched in January and requires health care providers to request approvals before proceeding with specific procedures and products, like skin substitutes and epidural injections for pain management. It operates in New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona, and Washington, with plans to run until 2031.
Among several issues, documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit indicated that one WISeR vendor cautioned the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services about unreasonably expecting a functional product by the program’s intended launch date.
Throughout the initial rollout, both the vendor, Innovaccer, and its Medicare contracting partner reported problems aligning with complaints from healthcare providers. The poorly executed technology resulted in postponed surgeries and “patients calling our offices in tears because their procedures are being delayed while awaiting approvals or guidance,” asserted providers.
“I’ve had to witness three patients cry at bedside due to waiting for prior authorization for kyphoplasty/vertebral augmentation,” one provider from Ohio reported in a feedback survey. “These patients are in severe pain. Many physician offices aren’t receiving replies from Innovaccer, and there’s no way to reach a human within their system. This represents a disgrace to the human race in America; it’s akin to Third World conditions.”
WISeR is a pivotal aspect of the Trump administration’s initiative to make healthcare more affordable while reducing waste. Officials have marketed WISeR as a tech-driven solution to easily “expedite and enhance the review process” for certain procedures susceptible to fraud, waste, and abuse. The approval process is designed to be completed in three days or fewer and aims to “reduce costs and alleviate administrative burdens on providers and suppliers,” despite these procedures previously requiring no approvals.
Indeed! Feel free to return when your relentless quest to eradicate “waste, fraud, and abuse” takes you across the Potomac to search that massive pentagonal structure just southwest of the White House. According to Google Earth, it’s only 3,600 yards away (about the distance of nine golf holes from the back tees at Trump Bedminster) and quite easy to locate. I can’t be the only one who read WISeR and thought WiseAss.
Part the Fourth: The Impact of Environmental Actions. It truly does matter. September 16th was World Ozone Day—a moment to celebrate:
Global efforts for a cooler planet commemorate the Montreal Protocol and the significant impact of its Kigali Amendment ten years post-adoption. The Montreal Protocol has demonstrated that science-informed policy, universal participation, strong compliance, dedicated financing, and effective collaborations can yield real and measurable results. These elements have not only safeguarded the ozone layer but have also enabled nations and industries to adapt to safer, more sustainable alternatives while supporting economic growth.
Indeed, the Montreal Protocol succeeded, much like the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and institutions like the EPA, OSHA, NIOSH, and the CDC, not to mention the FDA (until recently). Our challenges are solvable, but not within the current artificial landscape of conventional politics and economics, which is nearing its end. This reminds me:
There are three types of (always) men: (1) those who educate and teach themselves, (2) those who can learn from others, and (3) those who need to experience the shock of the electric fence firsthand. Unfortunately, this time, the repercussions will be felt by billions.
Parting Thoughts as a teaser for next week’s essay:
From Amish Economy…
We live by mercy, if we live.
To which we have no suitable retort,
Except to work diligently and express gratitude,
To nurture Creation’s realm.
And my friend David Kline shared with me,
‘This talk of self-discovery sounds strange to Amish ears,
For we don’t seek to find ourselves.
Instead, we aim to lose
Ourselves’ – thus, we are discovered within
the lost world of sunshine and rainfall
Where fields flourish and ripen,
And people share meals together,
Supported by God’s kindness, generous even towards the ungrateful.
…
At dusk in summer, a man
With hair and beard curling like spring ferns
Sits beneath the yard trees, at ease,
With his youngest daughter on his lap.
This results from his rising at dawn,
Caring for his family, helping his neighbors,
Laboring diligently, spending sparingly, maintaining his place.
–Wendell Berry. Adela Press, Versailles, Kentucky, 1996
Thank you for reading! See you next week. In the meantime, I echo sentiments from Nat and Amfortas, along with many others in our community: “Stay safe!”
