| Tweet |  |
DARPA Project Starts Building Human Memory Prosthetics
By Eliza Strickland
spectrum.ieee.org
8-27-14
The first memory-enhancing devices could be implanted within four years“They’re trying to do 20 years of research in 4 years,” says Michael Kahana in a tone that’s a mixture of excitement and disbelief. Kahana, director of the Computational Memory Lab at the University of Pennsylvania, is mulling over the tall order from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). In the next four years, he and other researchers are charged with understanding the neuroscience of memory and then building a prosthetic memory device that’s ready for implantation in a human brain.
DARPA’s first contracts under its Restoring Active Memory (RAM) program challenge two research groups to construct implants for veterans with traumatic brain injuries that have impaired their memories. Over 270,000 U.S. military service members have suffered such injuries since 2000, according to DARPA, and there are no truly effective drug treatments. This program builds on an earlier DARPA initiative focused on building a memory prosthesis, under which a different group of researchers had dramatic success in improving recall in mice and monkeys.
Kahana’s team will start by searching for biological markers of memory formation and retrieval. For this early research, the test subjects will be hospitalized epilepsy patients who have already had electrodes implanted to allow doctors to study their seizures. Kahana will record the electrical activity in these patients’ brains while they take memory tests. . . .
Continue Reading . . .
See Also:
DARPA Advances Electronics That Fight Infection and Dissolve Away | VIDEO
The Next Era of Space Exploration: DARPA & NASA Sponsor 100-Year Starship Study
DARPA's Robot, LS3 Can Follow Troops into Battle; Responds To Voice Command | TECH NEWS | VIDEO
SHARE YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE