Future neuro-cognitive warfare

[Magda Hassan]

[David Guyatt]

[Ed Jewett]

Military Wants to Super-Charge Troop Smarts

• By Katie Drummond
  
• April 29, 2010 |
  
• 8:07 am |
  
• Categories: Science!
  

The Pentagon’s been trying to get ahead of the curve on neuroscience for years, toying with ideas like mind-reading whether people are lying and performance-degrading drugs for enemy combatants. Now, it’s launching a major effort to harness neuroscience in a way that might better prepare soldiers for the mental rigors of modern warfare.
In a series of small business solicitations released last week, the Office of the Secretary of Defense outlined plans for a new “Cognitive Readiness Technology” program with the aim of “making our warfighters as cognitively strong as they are physically strong.”
Neuroscience is at the locus of the program. Before they can super-charge cognition, Pentagon scientists need to understand exactly how it works. So they’re launching “Neuromorphic Models of Human Social Cultural Behavior” (HSCB) to accurately model human cognition, including how we perceive, learn and retain information. HSCB models already exist, and are used by troops and decision-makers to predict the outcome of a choices during a mission. But the models “are only as good as the fidelity of the human behavior representations (HBR) that form them.” Right now, those representations are based entirely on empirical observation, which the military wants to swap out for a model that can tap into “the functions of the brain that give rise to actual human cognition.”
It’s not the first time the Pentagon has tried to map the human mind. Last year, research agency Darpa requested proposals for systems that would synchronize neural brain waves to optimize the mind’s storage capacity and memory recall. The agency has also tried to create synthetic versions of living brains, complete with “neuroscience-inspired architecture.”
The military wants cognitive mapping to help assess troop readiness in a war-zone. Their small-business solicitations include a request for embeddable body sensors that could automatically determine mental preparedness, which can be influenced by factors like fatigue, cognitive overload or stress, based on physiological and neural data. The sensors would do more than just analyze the cognitive status of their wearer — they’d be combined with the data from other team members, to instantly identify just how performance-ready a given unit actually is.
But no matter how cognitively capable troops become, they’ll still rely on computers to handle much of their workload. Humans, the solicitation notes, “are quick to arrive at initial decisions,” but computers can more quickly calculate pros and cons of different tactics. That’s why the military also wants neuroscience to “bridge the human-machine systems gap” and turn troops and computers into collaborative units. Their “neuro-cognitive control of human machine systems,” would tap into the neural signals that indicate desired actions, then transmit them to a computer to determine the optimal approach and carry it out.
And a training program that emphasizes brawny brains over bodies reflects a trend across Pentagon departments: Just last month, the Army announced a redesign of their physical-fitness program to accommodate troops spending more time behind computer screens than they do on their feet.
Photo: U.S Army


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[Ed Jewett]

Pentagon: Boost Training With Computer-Troop Mind Meld

• By Katie Drummond
  
• April 27, 2010 |
  
• 1:13 pm |
  
• Categories: Gadgets and Gear
  

The Pentagon is looking to better train its troops — by scanning their minds as they play video games.
Adaptive, mind-reading computer systems have been a work-in-progress among military agencies for at least a decade. In 2000, far-out research agency Darpa launched “Augmented Cognition,” a program that sought to develop computers that used EEG scans to adjust how they displayed information — visually, orally, or otherwise — to avoid overtaxing one realm of a troop’s cognition.
The Air Force also took up the idea, by trying to use EEGs to “assess the operator’s actual cognitive state” and “avoid cognitive bottlenecks before they occur.”
Zeroing in on brainpower is a strategy that reflects the changing tactics of fighting wars: today’s troop needs to be as cognitively ready as they are physically — if not more. They’ve also got to spend more time on the ground in urban settings, interacting with locals and canvassing for information. That’s where virtual cultural trainers often come in handy. Troops are prepped in language, social norms and cultural sensitivity, before they even leave their base.
The trainers are quickly becoming more sophisticated. As Danger Room pal Peter Singer notes, the Pentagon is already using “three-dimensional experiences that hit multiple senses,” including, in one case, a wearable collar that emits key odors.
Now, the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) is soliciting small business proposals for an even more immersive trainer, one that includes voice-recognition technology, and picks up on vocal tone and facial gestures. The game would then react and adapt to a war-fighter’s every action. For example, if a player’s gesture “insults the local tribal leader,” the trainee would “find that future interactions with the population are more difficult and more hostile.”
And, most importantly, the new programs would react to the warrior’s own physiological and neurological cues. They’d be monitored using an EEG, eye tracking, heart and respiration rate, and other physiological markers. Based on the metrics, the game would adapt in difficulty and “keep trainees in an optimal state of learning.”

The OSD isn’t ready to use neuro-based systems in the war zone, but the agency does want to capitalize on advances in neuroscience that have assigned meaningful value to intuitive decision-making. As the OSD solicitation points out, troops often need to make fast-paced decisions in high-stress environments, with limited information and context. Well-reasoned, analytic decisions are rarely possible — which would make intuition, if it were reliable, an ideal tool to give American troops the upper hand.
That’s where neuroscience comes in. OSD wants simulated games that use EEGs to monitor the cognitive patterns of trainees, particularly at what’s thought to be the locus of neurally based, intuitive decision-making — the basal ganglia. In his seminal paper on the neuroscience of intuition, Harvard’s Matthew Lieberman notes that the ganglia can “learn temporal patterns that are predictive of events of significance, regardless of conscious intent … as long as exposure is repeatedly instantiated.”
By using neural monitoring to supervise a trainee’s progress in their simulated world, the military could bolster the odds that snap decisions in the real-world will be based on more than just a gut feeling.
Photo: Jeff Corwin Photography/Boeing
See Also:

• Pentagon’s PCs Bend to Your Brain
  
• Pentagon’s Mind-Reading Computers Replicate
  
• Defense Spooks: Let’s Control Enemy Minds
  
• Army Funds ‘Synthetic Telepathy’ Research
  
• Top Pentagon Scientists Fear Brain-Modified Foes
  
• Pentagon Begins Fake Cat Brain Project
  

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[Ed Jewett]

Pentagon Turns to Brain Implants to Repair Damaged Minds

• By Katie Drummond
  
• May 7, 2010 |
  
• 8:29 am |
  
• Categories: DarpaWatch
  

An estimated 10 to 20 percent of troops coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan are suffering from traumatic brain injuries, or TBIs, which afflict 1.7 million Americans each year. Now the Pentagon’s rolling out a revolutionary initiative to treat the condition: brain implants that one researcher likens to “replacement parts” for damaged gray matter.
“When something happens to the brain right now, there’s so little that the medical community can do,” Krishna Shenoy, associate professor of electrical engineering and bioengineering at Stanford University, told Danger Room. “Our goal is to understand — and then be able to change — how a brain responds to trauma.”
No surprise that military extreme science agency Darpa is behind the project, which is called REPAIR, or Reorganization and Plasticity to Accelerate Injury Recovery. Yesterday, they announced an initial two-year round of $14.9 million in funding for four institutions, led by Stanford and Brown universities, that will collaborate on the brain-chip project. All in, it’ll involve 10 professors and their research teams, working in neuroscience, psychiatry, brain modeling and even semiconductors.

Significant progress has already been made in understanding brain injury. Scientists can create conceptual, mathematical models of brain activity, and are also able to record the electrical pulses emitted by individual neurons in the brain, which offers insight into how those neurons communicate. That knowledge has spurred rapid progress in neural-assisted prosthetic devices, a program that Shenoy collaborated on with Geoffrey Ling, the same Darpa program manager behind REPAIR.
But what experts can’t yet do, Shenoy said, is alter those electrical pulses to turn brain circuits on or off. His team will use optogenetics, an emerging technique that involves emitting light pulses to precisely trigger neural activity, to develop an implanted TBI treatment device.
“Before this, emitting light into the brain would be like hitting it with a hammer,” Shenoy said. “What we’re doing now is pin-pointing a single neuron, and that neuron will naturally change its activity depending on the cue.”
The implants developed by the project will likely be composed of electrodes or optical fibers, and will sit on the surface of the brain. They’ll read electrical signals from neurons, and deliver appropriate light pulses to stimulate other brain regions in response. The implants would allow the brain to operate normally, by acting as substitutes for areas that were damaged or “unavailable.”
First up for Shenoy and company are optogenetic tests on mice, rats and eventually monkeys, to better understand how different regions of the brain interact. For example, how one area of the brain knows which signals to send to other parts. Once they’ve got that down, the researchers hope to develop chips that essentially mimic those interactions, so that an implant can “read a signal from region A, bypass damaged area B, and get that signal to C,” Shenoy said.
And while Darpa’s interested in ailing vets, the implants could have broad civilian application, including help for those who’ve suffered a stroke or undergone surgery to remove a brain tumor. If all goes according to plan, Shenoy expects implants for lab animals within four years.
Photo: National Science Foundation
See Also:

• DARPA to Map Monkey Brains
  
• Pentagon Preps Soldier Telepathy Push
  
• Military Wants to Super-Charge Troop Smarts
  
• Total Recall: Pentagon Looks to ‘Optimize’ Troops’ Minds
  
• Darpa: Freeze Soldiers to Save Injured Brains
  
• Army’s Helmet Sensors Measure Hits to Head
  

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