DARPA of the U.S. Department of Defense issued an RFP to issue $14.9 million to fund a research project about brain implants to repair brain injuries. The project aims to find a better way to analyze brain activity in order to develop more advanced models of how it operates. The investigative team come from fields of neurobiology, psychiatry, and network engineering.
DARPA seeks new methods for analysis and decoding of neural signals in order to understand how neural-based sensory stimulation could be applied to accelerate recovery from brain injury. Ultimately, it is desired to develop models of neural codes and temporal patterns that can provide an ability to interpret and predict changes in neural organization through plasticity at multiple scales of measurement.
Project goals are:
To create a bio-computationally accurate model of a primate performing a complex dexterous task;
To demonstrate the ability to stimulate relevant regions of the brain to evoke a response in the primate similar to that evoked through natural interaction with their surrounding environment;
To enable injury recovery by mimicking or simulating an injured brain.
Pentagon enlists universities to collaborate on brain implants to repair brain injury
Reorganization and Plasticity to Accelerate Injury Recovery (REPAIR)