{"id":20949,"date":"2016-01-19T18:14:02","date_gmt":"2016-01-20T02:14:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/the-us-military-wants-a-chip-to-translate-your-brain-activity-into-binary-code"},"modified":"2017-04-24T22:56:38","modified_gmt":"2017-04-25T05:56:38","slug":"the-us-military-wants-a-chip-to-translate-your-brain-activity-into-binary-code","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/the-us-military-wants-a-chip-to-translate-your-brain-activity-into-binary-code","title":{"rendered":"The US Military Wants a Chip to Translate Your Brain Activity Into Binary Code"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\\'blog-photo\\' href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/the-us-military-wants-a-chip-to-translate-your-brain-activity-into-binary-code.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s been a weird day for weird science. Not long after researchers claimed victory in performing a head transplant on a monkey, the US military\u2019s blue-sky R&amp;D agency announced a completely insane plan to build a chip that would <a href=\"http:\/\/www.darpa.mil\/news-events\/2015-01-19\" target=\"_blank\">enable the human brain to communicate directly with computers<\/a>. What is this weird, surreal future?<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s all real, believe it or not. Or at least DARPA desperately wants it to be. The first wireless brain-to-computer interface <a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/5988342\/the-first-wireless-implantable-brain-computer-interface-will-help-us-move-things-with-our-minds-on-the-go\">actually popped up a few years ago<\/a>, and DARPA\u2019s worked on <a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/355666\/darpa-building-neuromorphic-brain-on-a-chip-paging-sarah-connor\">various<\/a> brain chip <a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/darpas-spending-70-million-on-a-brain-chip-for-mental-1452375660\">projects<\/a> over the years. But there are shortcomings to existing technology: According to today\u2019s announcement, current brain-computer interfaces are akin to \u201ctwo supercomputers trying to talk to each other using an old 300-baud modem.\u201d They just aren\u2019t fast enough for truly transformative neurological applications, like restoring vision to a blind person. This would ostensibly involve connect a camera that can transmit visual information directly to the brain, and the implant would translate the data into neural language.<\/p>\n<p>To accomplish this magnificent feat, DARPA is launching a new program called Neural Engineering System Design (NESD) that stands to squeeze some characteristically bonkers innovation out of the science community. In a press release, the agency describes what\u2019s undoubtedly the closest thing to a Johnny Mneumonic plot-line you\u2019ve ever seen in real life. It <a href=\"http:\/\/www.darpa.mil\/news-events\/2015-01-19\" target=\"_blank\">reads<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/the-us-military-wants-a-chip-to-translate-your-brain-ac-1753876325\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s been a weird day for weird science. Not long after researchers claimed victory in performing a head transplant on a monkey, the US military\u2019s blue-sky R&amp;D agency announced a completely insane plan to build a chip that would enable the human brain to communicate directly with computers. What is this weird, surreal future? It\u2019s [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":362,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1523,38,9,47,44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-computing","category-engineering","category-military","category-neuroscience","category-supercomputing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/362"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20949"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51148,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20949\/revisions\/51148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}