System could be used to give soldiers 'supersenses' and boost brainpower
The DARPA Targeted Neuroplasticity Training (TNT) program is exploring ways to speed up skill acquisition by activating synaptic plasticity. If the program succeeds, downloadable learning that happens in a flash may be the result.
The US military has revealed $65 of funding for a programme to develop a 'brain chip' allowing humans to simply plug into a computer.They say the system could give soldiers supersenses and even help treat people with blindness, paralysis and speech disorders. The goal is 'developing an implantable system able to provide precision communication between the brain and the digital world,' DARPA officials said.
It takes years to learn some of the most important national security skills, such as speaking foreign languages, analyzing surveillance images, and marksmanship. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) wants to speed up that training process using electrical stimulation to enhance the brain’s ability to learn. The Defense Department’s research arm, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), today announced it had awarded multimillion-dollar contracts to eight university groups that will study and develop such technologies.
It has selected its five grant recipients for the Neural Engineering System Design (NESD) program, which it began at the start of this year.
Brown University, Columbia University, The Seeing and Hearing Foundation, the John B. Pierce Laboratory, Paradromics Inc and the University of California, Berkeley will all receive multi-million dollar grants.
DARPA wants to see a 30 percent improvement in learning rates by the end of the four-year program. Studies will be conducted on human volunteers and animals. DARPA did not disclose the total value of the research contracts.
This isn’t DARPA’s first foray into electrical and other kinds of nerve stimulation. In 2014, it sponsored direct brain stimulation research in a project called RAM that aims to restore memory in people with traumatic brain injuries. Scientists last week published the first major results of that program. And in 2015, the agency bet on electrical stimulation as a therapeutic technique for treating disease, awarding contracts through its ElectRx project.
For the new stimulation project, dubbed targeted neuroplasticity training, or TNT, research teams will focus on peripheral nerves that project into the brain and tug at memories. By delivering electrical pulses into the body’s nervous system, the scientists aim to modulate the brain’s neural connectivity and production of key chemicals. That kind of neural tuning can “influence cognitive state—how awake you are, or how much attention you’re paying to something you’re viewing or performing,” says Doug Weber, a bioengineer at DARPA who heads up the TNT project.
If it works—if researchers can improve a person’s ability to learn—the DoD could reduce the amount of time spent training soldiers and intelligence agents. “Foreign language training is one of our primary application areas because it’s very time intensive,” says Weber. Language courses last more than a year, and only about 10 percent of trainees reach the level of proficiency needed for their jobs, he says.
Weber says he envisions intelligence agents or soldiers wearing some kind of noninvasive stimulation device that delivers precise electrical pulses as they practice their skills. And unlike caffeine or energy drinks, the stimulation can be turned off and, hopefully, causes fewer side effects.
But before DARPA can sharpen its sharpshooters, it must figure out exactly where and how to stimulate the body’s nervous system. That’s the charge to the university groups—to understand the anatomy and function of neural circuits associated with learning.
The brain may seem like the obvious place to start, but DARPA has asked researchers to focus instead on the peripheral nervous system—nerves outside the brain and spinal cord. Peripheral nerve circuits are simpler and easier to map than those of the brain. And they tend to be more accessible than those in the brain, making surgical implantation of electrodes less invasive. “It would be impossible to justify a brain implant for someone who is otherwise healthy,” says Weber.
The teams awarded the research contracts will start with the vagus and trigeminal nerves. A team headed up by Stephen Helms Tillery, a neuroscientist at Arizona State University, for example, will study the anatomy and role of the trigeminal nerve—a cranial nerve responsible for sensations and motor function in the face.
Evidence suggests that this nerve complex has access to areas of the brain stem that release norepinephrine, a chemical associated with attention, and dopamine, a chemical linked to the brain’s ability to adapt. Helms Tillery’s team will study the anatomy and function of the trigeminal nerve in rhesus macaques.
Tillery’s team will also stimulate the trigeminal nerve in human volunteers to see how it affects behavior. In one experiment, with help from the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, volunteers will watch surveillance video and try to identify a person carrying a weapon. In another experiment, in partnership with a military research laboratory called USARIEM, volunteers will fire rifles at long ranges in a virtual shooting range while their behavior and performance are quantified.
Other TNT awardees are focusing on the vagus nerve—a major neural throughway that connects most of the body’s key organs. Researchers in 2011 reported in Nature that stimulating the vagus nerve enabled rats to better recognize auditory cues. That report, in part, inspired DARPA’s TNT program, Weber says.
TNT researchers will likely face some ethical questions, such as the ethics of using enhancement on war fighters, says Helms Tillery. And if electrical stimulation proves effective at enhancing learning, how pervasive and mandatory it would become in the military is unclear.
Weber says he envisions electrical stimulation being a choice—one that enlisted soldiers will want. “There are elite performers who are eager for anything and everything that would give them an additional boost or benefit. For these individuals, I think it would be fantastic if we can help,” he says. But “it’s likely that the initial users won’t be enlisted folks. They’ll be civilians working for the DoD. They have a bit more autonomy than some enlisted folks,” he says.
DARPA is funding an ethics workshop to be hosted by Arizona State University within the first year of the TNT program.
Summaries of the teams’ proposed research appear below;
A Brown University team led by Dr. Arto Nurmikko will seek to decode neural processing of speech, focusing on the tone and vocalization aspects of auditory perception. The team’s proposed interface would be composed of networks of up to 100,000 untethered, submillimeter-sized “neurograin” sensors implanted onto or into the cerebral cortex. A separate RF unit worn or implanted as a flexible electronic patch would passively power the neurograins and serve as the hub for relaying data to and from an external command center that transcodes and processes neural and digital signals.
A Columbia University team led by Dr. Ken Shepard will study vision and aims to develop a non-penetrating bioelectric interface to the visual cortex. The team envisions layering over the cortex a single, flexible complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) integrated circuit containing an integrated electrode array. A relay station transceiver worn on the head would wirelessly power and communicate with the implanted device.
A Fondation Voir et Entendre team led by Drs. Jose-Alain Sahel and Serge Picaud will study vision. The team aims to apply techniques from the field of optogenetics to enable communication between neurons in the visual cortex and a camera-based, high-definition artificial retina worn over the eyes, facilitated by a system of implanted electronics and micro-LED optical technology.
A John B. Pierce Laboratory team led by Dr. Vincent Pieribone will study vision. The team will pursue an interface system in which modified neurons capable of bioluminescence and responsive to optogenetic stimulation communicate with an all-optical prosthesis for the visual cortex.
A Paradromics, Inc., team led by Dr. Matthew Angle aims to create a high-data-rate cortical interface using large arrays of penetrating microwire electrodes for high-resolution recording and stimulation of neurons. As part of the NESD program, the team will seek to build an implantable device to support speech restoration. Paradromics’ microwire array technology exploits the reliability of traditional wire electrodes, but by bonding these wires to specialized CMOS electronics the team seeks to overcome the scalability and bandwidth limitations of previous approaches using wire electrodes.
A University of California, Berkeley, team led by Dr. Ehud Isacoff aims to develop a novel “light field” holographic microscope that can detect and modulate the activity of up to a million neurons in the cerebral cortex. The team will attempt to create quantitative encoding models to predict the responses of neurons to external visual and tactile stimuli, and then apply those predictions to structure photo-stimulation patterns that elicit sensory percepts in the visual or somatosensory cortices, where the device could replace lost vision or serve as a brain-machine interface for control of an artificial limb.
