Damaged Human Brains
DARPA has announced $14.9 million in funding for major research institutions to collaborate on brain
implants that can help repair traumatic brain injury.
The Pentagon project, called RePAIR (”Reorganization and Plasticity to Accelerate Injury Recovery“),
aims to find a way to better analyze brain activity to develop more advanced models of how it operates.
Brain injury is not an uncommon injury. It affects vehicular accident victims, stroke patients and military
veterans alike, totaling 1.7 million Americans each year.
Currently, scientists can create conceptual models of brain activity and can record electrical pulses
emitted by individual neurons in the brain. But they can’t yet manipulate those pulses to reprogram the
brain.
Enter optogenetics. The new technique involves emitting pulses of light to pinpoint and trigger a single
neuron.
The scientists involved in the project seek to develop brain implants made of electrodes or optical fibers
that can read electrical signals from neurons and deliver light pulses to stimulate other brain regions in
response — in effect, filling the gaps or “gray areas” where the brain has been too damaged to function
properly.
Here’s an excerpt from the DARPA solicitation:
Through understanding the principles that allow networks in different anatomic regions to coordinate
and communicate in order to perform a task, we seek to understand the means through which the brain
enables improved performance over time. Further, by evaluating brain activity at several scales
simultaneously (EEG, local field potential, single neuron, neurotransmitter, and corresponding scales for
other transmission means), investigators may be able to determine which properties generated at the
single neuron level can be correlated and predicted in a meaningful manner at grosser levels of
measurement, such as EEG.
The program is divided into two phases with three primary goals:
Create a bio-computationally accurate model of a primate performing a complex dexterous task;
Demonstrate the ability to stimulate relevant regions of the brain to evoke a response in the primate
similar to that evoked through natural interaction with their surrounding environment;
Enable injury recovery by mimicking or simulating an uninjured brain.
Naturally, the researchers must first understand how the brain functions before they try to emulate it. If
all goes as planned, testing in lab animals could commence in as little as four years.
http://www.smartplanet.com/business/blog/smart-takes/pentagon-enlists-universities-to-collaborate-on-
brain-implants-to-repair-brain-injury/6693/
In summary, all "we" have to do is to "manipulate those pulses to reprogram the brain."
Hard to disagree with that statement, isn't it?
Manbot
Next
DARPA has announced $14.9 million in funding for major research institutions to collaborate on brain
implants that can help repair traumatic brain injury.
The Pentagon project, called RePAIR (”Reorganization and Plasticity to Accelerate Injury Recovery“),
aims to find a way to better analyze brain activity to develop more advanced models of how it operates.
Brain injury is not an uncommon injury. It affects vehicular accident victims, stroke patients and military
veterans alike, totaling 1.7 million Americans each year.
Currently, scientists can create conceptual models of brain activity and can record electrical pulses
emitted by individual neurons in the brain. But they can’t yet manipulate those pulses to reprogram the
brain.
Enter optogenetics. The new technique involves emitting pulses of light to pinpoint and trigger a single
neuron.
The scientists involved in the project seek to develop brain implants made of electrodes or optical fibers
that can read electrical signals from neurons and deliver light pulses to stimulate other brain regions in
response — in effect, filling the gaps or “gray areas” where the brain has been too damaged to function
properly.
Here’s an excerpt from the DARPA solicitation:
Through understanding the principles that allow networks in different anatomic regions to coordinate
and communicate in order to perform a task, we seek to understand the means through which the brain
enables improved performance over time. Further, by evaluating brain activity at several scales
simultaneously (EEG, local field potential, single neuron, neurotransmitter, and corresponding scales for
other transmission means), investigators may be able to determine which properties generated at the
single neuron level can be correlated and predicted in a meaningful manner at grosser levels of
measurement, such as EEG.
The program is divided into two phases with three primary goals:
Create a bio-computationally accurate model of a primate performing a complex dexterous task;
Demonstrate the ability to stimulate relevant regions of the brain to evoke a response in the primate
similar to that evoked through natural interaction with their surrounding environment;
Enable injury recovery by mimicking or simulating an uninjured brain.
Naturally, the researchers must first understand how the brain functions before they try to emulate it. If
all goes as planned, testing in lab animals could commence in as little as four years.
http://www.smartplanet.com/business/blog/smart-takes/pentagon-enlists-universities-to-collaborate-on-
brain-implants-to-repair-brain-injury/6693/
In summary, all "we" have to do is to "manipulate those pulses to reprogram the brain."
Hard to disagree with that statement, isn't it?
Manbot
Next
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