Brain implants could finally become a reality, thanks to those crazy, lovable boffins over at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, better known as DARPA.

The agency, which has been working on all kinds of hair-brained schemes from laser guided bullets to Spiderman-like climbing pads and self-destructing microprocessors, is now attempting to build memory-restoring chips that can be implanted directly into the human brain.

DARPA actually has a bit of previous with neural interfaces – for example, its effort to build an artificial cat brain has been up and running for several years already.

But this announcement could be benficial to more than just our feline friends – according to DARPA, its Restoring Active Memory (RAM) project “aims to develop and test wireless, implantable “neuroprosthetics” that can help service members, veterans, and others overcome memory deficits incurred as a result of traumatic brain injury (TBI) or disease”.

To make it all happen, DARPA’s handed out $22.5 million to the University of Pennsylvania and another $15 million to UCLA, which will act as the initiative’s lead institutions. Another benficiary of the scheme is the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which will be given $2.5 million to build the actual “implantable neural device” if and when the universities can come up with a coherent design.

Justin Sanchez, RAM’s program manager, says the project is exciting because it gives us an “opportunity to reveal many new aspects of human memory and learn about the brain in ways that were never before possible”.

To begin with, the participating universities will try to develop computer models of memory that can understand “how neurons code declarative memories—those well-defined parcels of knowledge that can be consciously recalled and described in words, such as events, times, and places”. Once built – if they’re built – these models will become the basis of what’s wired into DARPA’s “neuroprosthetic” chips.

UCLA has carried out previous studies that demonstrate a link between memories and stimulation of the entorhinal region of the brain.

“Considered the entrance to the hippocampus—which helps form and store memories—the entorhinal area plays a crucial role in transforming daily experience into lasting memories, says DARPA. “Data collected during the first year of the project from patients already implanted with brain electrodes as part of their treatment for epilepsy will be used to develop a computational model of the hippocampal-entorhinal system that can then be used to test memory restoration in patients”.

The next step would be to build a “high-spatial-resolution neuromodulation device” which can be directly implanted into the brains of patients who’ve suffered traumatic brain injuries. At the same time, University of Pennsylvania researchers have been tasked with making the chips work, by identifying the biomarkers of memory function, in order to try and come up with models for restoring memory function.

photo credit: I’m Daleth via photopin cc