Three months in Cape Town: Clinical Neuroscience & AI

Between October and December, I had the privilege of spending three months in Cape Town as part of the DFG I2I initiative, a German-African research collaboration, working on the project “Supporting the Diagnosis of Epilepsy Using Artificial Intelligence.” I conducted this project at the Neuroscience Institute at the University of Cape Town and Groote Schuur Hospital.

Can LLMs understand epileptic seizures?

The main question we explored was simple: can large language models (LLMs) accurately predict epilepsy diagnoses from nothing more than verbal descriptions of seizures. The kind of descriptions patients and doctors give, in their own words, in their own language?

This matters more than it might initially seem. Epilepsy diagnosis is often delayed, particularly in settings where access to specialist neurologists or EEG facilities is limited. A patient’s description of their seizure, what they felt, how they moved, what others around them noticed, remains one of the most clinically informative pieces of information available. But processing and interpreting those doctores notes is not trivial. That’s exactly where language models might help.

Organizing a Workshop on “Clinical Neuroscience & AI”

Alongside the research, I organized a workshop on Clinical Neuroscience & AI, bringing together researchers from Cape Town and Tübingen with the goal of building on an already existing collaboration.

The talks covered many topics, from using machine learning to find markers of cognitive health, to the vision for an AI initiative in South Africa, to computational psychiatry. Each one opened up a different angle on the same big question: what does AI-driven diagnostics actually look like when it’s embedded in real healthcare systems, with real constraints?

Organizing a workshop is always more work than it looks from the outside, the logistics, the coordination across time zones, and decisions to make, but I’m genuinely thankful for the experience. I learned so much, not just about event management, but about how differently people in different research contexts frame the same problems.

What I’m Taking Away

The Neuroscience Institute at the University of Cape Town gave me a research context I hadn’t experienced before. The proximity to the clinincal context made the effect our research could have feel very realistic. The question of how AI can support diagnosis, especially in resource-constrained or underserved settings, is a research field I want to gain more insights into. Cape Town also reminded me, that the best research happens in community. I’m looking forward to building on what started here.