Monday, October 28, 2013

Pentagon to Spend $70 Million on Brain Implant Research

Worldwide, 100,000 people have electrical implants in their brains to treat the involuntary movements associated with Parkinson’s disease, and scientists are experimenting with the technique for depression and other disorders. 
But today’s so-called deep brain stimulation only treats — it does not monitor its own effectiveness, partly because complex ailments like depression do not have defined biological signatures. 
The federal Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as Darpa, announced Thursday that it intended to spend more than $70 million over five years to jump to the next level of brain implants, either by improving deep brain stimulation or by developing new technology.
Justin Sanchez, Darpa program manager, said that for scientists now, “there is no technology that can acquire signals that can tell them precisely what is going on with the brain.” 
And so, he said, Darpa is “trying to change the game on how we approach these kinds of problems.” 
The new program, called Systems-Based Neurotechnology and Understanding for the Treatment of Neuropsychological Illnesses, is part of an Obama administration brain initiative, announced earlier this year, intended to promote innovative basic neuroscience. Participants in the initiative include Darpa, as well as the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.
[...] 
The testing of any such devices would involve both animals and human subjects, and Dr. Sanchez said Darpa had set up an ethics panel for the new program and other Darpa neuroscience work. A presidential bioethics commission also oversees all aspects of the brain initiative. 
The Obama administration is budgeting $100 million for the first year of the brain initiative. A committee of the health institutes produced a draft report in September that indicated the agency would concentrate its $40 million share on systems or networks in the brain, not individual cells and not the whole brain.
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1 comment:

BOSMAN said...

The 'Pentagon' is going to spend upwards of $100 Million for the first year...on this Brain initiative.

The implant technology will be used for medical purposes only. That's why the grant is through the 'Pentagon' rather than HHS....hahahaha...