DARPA will create a neural interface capable of working with individual neurons.

As part of its new US Agency for Advanced Defense Research Projects (DARPA) plans to develop an implantable neural interface that can provide unprecedented signal resolution and bandwidth to transmit information between the human brain and electronic systems. The interface will be able to act as a kind of "translator", able to work with the electrochemical "language" of neurons, and with the "zero-ones" that form the basis of information technology. The goal of the project is to create a communication biocompatible device, the volume of which does not exceed 1 cu. cm.

The program, dubbed Neural Engineering System Design (NESD, “Designing Neuro-Engineering Systems”), is designed to significantly expand research opportunities in the field of neurotechnology and lay the foundation for the introduction of new therapeutic methods.

“Today, the best brain-computer interfaces are like supercomputers trying to talk to each other using an ancient 300 baud modem,” says NESD program manager Philip Alvelda. “Just imagine what can become a reality if we modernize our tools and can truly open the channel between the human brain and modern electronic devices.”
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Among the potential applications of the results obtained during the implementation of the program are the possibility of compensatory use for patients with visual and hearing impairments - it is assumed that visual and audio information will be transmitted in digital form to the brain with a resolution and quality much higher than that available using existing today technology.

Today, approved neural interfaces use the compression of huge amounts of information and transmitting them all over 100 channels, each of which collects signals from tens of thousands of neurons at the same time, which leads to noisy and inaccurate results. The difference of the NESD program is that within its framework it is planned to create a system that can communicate without any noise and interact with any of the one million neurons in a specific area of ​​the brain.

In order to achieve ambitious goals and ensure the possibility of practical use of promising devices, an integrated use of breakthrough solutions will be required in a number of scientific areas and disciplines - neurobiology, synthetic biology, low-power electronics, photonics, development and production of medical devices, systems engineering and clinical trials . In addition, NESD researchers will develop more sophisticated mathematical and neuro-computational methods that will be used to encode and transmit high-resolution sensory information between electronic devices and neurons of the cerebral cortex. These same methods will help compress data with minimal loss of accuracy and functionality.

To speed up the integration processes described above, NESD program managers plan to hire leading experts from various fields of the scientific community and industry who can offer the most advanced prototyping and production services, as well as provide intellectual property within the framework of the preliminary competition. In the next stages of the implementation of the NESD program, these Agency partners will be able to assist in the transfer of the technologies obtained to research and commercial applications.

The first meeting of potential NESD program participants will take place in early February of this year, according to a press release from DARPA.

Source: Bridging the Bio-Electronic Divide