Pentagram To Hook Soldiers Brains to Computers
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 super senses 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 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.
‘These organizations have formed teams to develop the fundamental research and component technologies required to pursue the NESD vision of a high-resolution neural interface and integrate them to create and demonstrate working systems able to support potential future therapies for sensory restoration,’ official said.
Four of the teams will focus on vision and two will focus on aspects of hearing and speech.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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