US military invests $ 65 million to study brain implants

According to experts, this study could cure blindness and deafness for humans.

According to Newsweek, the creation of a real connection between people and machines is of great importance. If the implants developed to connect the brain to the computer, people who are blind or deaf can recover some - or even all - of their lost abilities. People with disabilities use artificial hands and feet to be able to use them fluently, just as they have become a part of their bodies.

An agency of the US military announced on July 10 that it is actively promoting investment and pursuing this goal. The American Advanced Defense Research Agency (DARPA) said it has signed contracts with a total value of up to 65 million USD with 5 research organizations and a company to research the implant field. The brain aims to revolutionize treatment for those who have lost one or more of their senses.

Four members of the project will focus on sight; The other two member organizations will revolve around aspects of speaking and listening. At the end of this program (expected to be four years from now), DARPA hopes that they will develop prototypes of devices capable of transmitting information between the brain and the computer, although most likely they are will not be used for commercial purposes during this period.

The biggest goal of the project is to be able to decipher sensory information that people receive through their eyes, ears and other senses. This information will be converted to binary form - something that the computer can read.

A human brain is immersed in Formaldehyde, exhibited at the Neuropathology Museum in Lima, Peru.(photo: Newsweek).

This process is inherently feasible at the present time, but DARPA wants to increase the speed at which sensory information can be read by a computer. The types of brain implants available - such as those that help paralyzed people can control prosthetic limbs - receive information from hundreds of neurons in the human nervous system. DARPA wants to increase the number of 1 million neurons.

But even if DARPA is successful, that number is still very low compared to the human brain. According to Philip Alvelda, manager of the NESD program (Neural Engineering System Design): "The number of 1 million neurons is only a very small part compared to 86 billion neurons. It's in the human brain. Its complexity will remain a mystery for a very long time. "

There have been many projects using different techniques aimed at restoring senses to humans. Columbia University in New York is planning to build a flexible electronic circuit that can be placed on the brain. This device will use electrodes to "listen" to deep neurons in the visual cortex - a part of the brain that handles the information that the eye sees - and stimulates the neurons - That image to create images for visually impaired people. Subjects will wear a small device on their head for signal transceiver and help process information more easily and quickly.

Another project by Paradromics, a California-based technology company, aims to develop a device that can "penetrate" the brain with tiny electrodes to record information and stimulate the certain neurons. The idea of ​​this project is to help people who are dumb or hearing impaired recover their functions.

President Obama "fist bump" with a robot arm during a tour of innovative projects at the 2016 White House Frontiers conference.

DARPA has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in neurological technology - the interference between brain functions and digital technology - for the purpose of treating mental illness or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). ) for my soldiers. However, according to Justin Sanchez, head of DARPA's biotechnology group, the NESD program has a wider meaning and is "the foundation for a future in which brain interface technologies will transform change the way people live and work "

But when these projects have great potential in the future, developers still want us not to forget the present. Matthew Angle, head of Paradromics, said: "It will be a very long time before medical science allows us to have new eyes or restore injured spinal cord, but by connecting the brain. With computers, using digital devices to restore the function of damaged body parts is workable ".

This amount is part of DARPA's NESD program, which was launched in January 2016, with the goal of developing "an implant system that can communicate information between the brain and the digital world accurately. ". NESD is one of many opening programs for the "BRAIN Initiative" of the Obama administration, which was announced in 2013.