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Darpa Initiative Will Focus on Advancing Deep Brain Stimulation
- atrilumen 13y agoDarpa just wants to treat depression. (And not, you know, create supersoldiers or anything.)
- ChuckMcM 13y agoDepressed soldiers are a liability. Also things like PTSD and other traumas might benefit.
- caycep 13y agoLot of vets with Parkinson's too, interesting enough - one of the biggest clinical trial of this device was done in the VA population.
- uncoder0 13y agoInternet, GPS, Autonomous cars ... Shall I continue?
- rhizome 13y agoThese discoveries will also be used for interrogation.
- etrautmann 13y agothat's not particularly relevant here. All of this investment and technology is based on reading out motor cortical activity intended for controlling muscles. We're FAR away from decoding thoughts, whatever that even means.
- rhizome 13y agoSure it is. There are far simpler and more straightforward ways of using invasive brain technologies for interrogation than "decoding thoughts."
- narfquat 13y agoOh good, a military R&D lab aiming to develop brain implants... Is there an equivalent of a tin foil hat that is available for subdermal implantation? Kidding aside, military research has resulted in some of the most amazing stuff these days... like the entire space program and velcro.
- smokinn 13y agoAlthough Google is usually the brand associated with self-driving cars, DARPA actually did most of the work. The self-driving car challenge went on for many many years with ever increasing goals until DARPA decided the tech works now and stopped the competition. Google then hired the team that won the last several competitions and kept the ball rolling. Seems to me like this is the only path towards true innovation since companies are great at exploiting existing tech and making incremental and efficiency improvements but are usually really bad at making great leaps forward. If you provide incentives divorced from the market for desirable goals the market can later pick up the successes and build on them.
- etrautmann 13y agoDARPA funded the work that took place at Carnegie Mellon and Stanford and other academic institutions. Google directly hired the winning teams.
- DerpDerpDerp 13y agoOr computers. The military threw a lot of money in to early computer research in order to make nuclear weapons work (better), cryptography, ballistics tables, and other military purposes.
- caycep 13y agoThere is actually a huge population in the VA w/ Parkinson's so it sort of makes sense, and there may be applications in TBI
- etrautmann 13y agoI'm involved with one of these programs and am very encouraged to see DARPA's focus as very much inline with the goals of the broader field of neuroscience. In heading off some of the anticipated snark, this is very much a program with the goal of understanding basic science and developing tools to better understand how our brains work.
- npalli 13y agoAnyone who wants to see the dramatic impact of deep brain stimulation needs to see this video[1]. Just by turning off and on his neurostimulator (see starting 2:00-ish) see the dramatic change in his body. [1]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBh2LxTW0s0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBh2LxTW0s0
- testing12341234 13y agoTo clarify the above, the video starts with the deep brain stimulation device turned on. The changes mentioned are due to the Parkinson's Disease effect showing themselves once the DBS device is turned off.
- monsterix 13y agoThat's a really interesting video on this debilitating disease. Are there any notable examples of where DBS has failed or what could entail as "the risk" of undergoing such a surgery? I have a friend whom I can refer about this procedure.
- etrautmann 13y agoDBS surgeries are somewhat invasive as they involve sticking a 3mm electrode all the way through cortex and deeper structures into the basal ganglia. That being said, anecdotally I believe the side effects are mostly modest, though can't speak on that authoritatively. http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/deep-brain-stimulation/MY00184/DSECTION=risks http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/deep-brain-stimulation/MY00...
- caycep 13y agoit's actually not too bad. There is a small micro electrode that is sub-millimeter, and the DBS electrode itself is ~1-1.5 mm depending on the model. The one traumatic part of it is that some groups use a device popularized by some of the French groups that use a 5-microelectrode array for the mapping portion of the surgery, which has a 4x4 cross sectional spread. This probably pins and destroys a lot of the brain tissue in its path, but the people who use it claim it gives them "better spatial resolution" in the mapping recordings. Which doesn't apparently improve overall accuracy anyway, but some people are married to using that damn device. Most surgeons in the US use 1-3 single electrode passes sequentially, which is a lot better.
- suprgeek 13y agoIf you have seen Fringe[1], you know where this is headed... [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_implant#Television http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_implant#Television
- bmmayer1 13y agoThere are no foreseeable negative consequences to having a government agency put microchips in our brains.
- missserenity 13y agoWhy are they funding breast implants?
- pageld 13y agoFunny story. Some armed forces surgeons get "practice" by putting in breast implants. At least that's what my wife who worked at the VA said.
- wavefunction 13y agoPotentially, some of it is for reconstruction after taking a hit in action and requiring a lot of surgery.
- zcarter 13y agoOn the inevitability human computer interfaces leading to some form of Übermenschine: "We just have to hope that Dick Cheney isn't the first person they plug in."
- TrainedMonkey 13y agoWe need to monitor thoughts of people to prevent them from committing crime. We promise* not to use that information in any* bad* way. * For a very specific meanings of promise, any, and bad which are all unfortunately classified. But seriously, this research can enable us to understand brain better and help a lot of people.
- LeBlanc 13y agoA lot of this research is going towards developing neuro-prosthetics. The primary application of neuro-prosthetics in humans is to give paraplegics either the ability to control a cursor with their mind (a huge improvement in standard of living) OR the ability to control a prosthetic arm or leg with their mind (the long term goal). Currently, this is only available with invasive brain surgery that can often have complications. So money spent on better imaging and implant technologies will have a strong positive impact on the field. Interestingly, the researchers I know in this area are confused about why such a big deal is being made about this "Brain Initiative" because the amount ($70M) is actually not a lot given how capital intensive this type of research is and how many labs it will be spread amongst. Still, any funding is better than no funding.
- caycep 13y agoThat is true - I don't know how many grants/VC rounds a company like Braingate has blown through. The Andersen group seems to have success as well, maybe with less actual expenditures.
- etrautmann 13y agoI'm at Stanford's neural prosthetic systems lab which has previously been funded largely under the DARPA REPAIR program. Minor point of clarification - while the surgeries to implant the electrode arrays are technically a neurosurgery, they're minimally invasive in the sense that it doesn't actually disturb or destroy any brain tissue since the motor cortex is accessible from the outer surface. The primary concerns now are not complications with surgery, but performance of the electrodes over timescales required by patients (several years minimum). I'm not aware of any significant complications in any of the BrainGate clinical trial participants to date (if there have been, I'm not aware of them and would be a little surprised to hear it).
- hollerith 13y ago>they're minimally invasive in the sense that it doesn't actually disturb or destroy any brain tissue since the motor cortex is accessible from the outer surface. There's a slogan, "you're never the same after the air hits your brain". Is that hyperbole then?
- ultimoo 13y agoTo put this in perspective, DARPA's annual budget is a little more than 2.8 bn. 70 mn. over five years is (naively) 14 mn. per year -- which is 0.05% of DARPA's budget.
- jabits 13y agoYeah, so nothing nefarious can result from this puny program.
- Wingman4l7 13y agoObligatory related Cory Doctorow scifi short story, 0wnz0red: http://www.salon.com/2002/08/28/0wnz0red/ http://www.salon.com/2002/08/28/0wnz0red/
- tonyplee 13y agoResistance is futile you will be assimilated. Google glass is not a moonshot. Google brain implant will be - just think about the SAT scores and all your collect test scores difference for those with brain implant and those without.
- nitrogen 13y agoThe book The Terminal Man by Michael Crichton was an interesting story about an experiment in deep brain stimulation.