Recover memories with brain implants?  Really?

DARPA (the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) hopes so.  Of course, their goal is to heal the soldiers who have been brain injured by war. By memory, we are not talking about helping the warfighter recall his or her name, but motor skills and other tasks that are necessary for life or to earn a living. But, like many a NASA advances of old, these developments may also help those who suffer from Alzheimer’s, among other folks.  How many folks suffer from memory losses?  How about 1.7 million new subjects a year!

I’ve written about Medtronic’s brain implants and Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) devices that were developed to treat Parkinson’s sufferers.  St. Jude and Boston Scientific have their own versions. One can assume that they are among those interested in the DARPA program, along with GE and IBM (who also have active research programs in this arena).

But, these new test development are funded via Obama’s BRAIN Initiative (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies, first announced in 2013).  DARPA is seeking a portable and wireless device (as opposed to the current wired versions, like in the picture above) to be used with the brain electrodes.  We should find out more about this aspect, as they are examining responses to their RFP (request for proposals) right now.

But, there are still other uses for and aspects to brain stimulation.  I’ve written about transcranial electric stimulation (tES) before; these electric currents may augment our mathematical capabilities, as opposed to memories. And, these tES electrodes are maintained outside the brain, not implanted as would be the case for deep brain stimulation .

The current work is not meant for people like me, to render me a math genius.  Instead, the goal is to work with those suffering from development dyscalculia (consider this to be dyslexia, but a problem with numbers and not letters), to help them remember phone numbers, examine bills, etc. This is not an esoteric study- some 6% of the population suffers from this affliction.

The big leap in this effort came from Dr. Roi Cohen Kadosh, original from the University of the Negev (Israel), but now with a full lab at Oxford (England).  His group found that the parietal lobe could be disturbed (via transcranial magnetic stimulation) to render doctoral students manifesting dyscalculia.It seems that tES lowers the threshold at which neurons are able to “fire”, so their activity is enhanced.

Science fiction is coming to life…

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