Total Recall: Pentagon Looks To Optimize Troops Minds

The U.S. military is racing to master the mind. Last year, Pentagon researchers kick-started a program to replicate a cat’s brain. In April, they requested proposals that would reproduce a monkey mind — and then test its neural pathways to understand brain damage. They’re even trying to create an entirely new model for human cognition that’s based on thermodynamics; your brain as heat energy.

Next up: turning soldier’s memories into finely-tuned hard drives. Darpa, the Pentagon’s far-out research arm, is soliciting ideas for a system that would optimize human memory storage and recall by synchronizing neural brain waves. The agency is hoping the project will keep human soldiers on pace with rapidly advancing computer technology.

With the growing trends in developing information systems that display increasingly greater amounts of data, new technologies are needed that help our Warfighters optimize the neurocognitive processes underlying the storage of information into memory.

Memory formation and long-term recall both depend on the interaction between different neural brain waves. Gamma waves facilitate memory creation, and Theta waves turn those short-term recollections into long lasting ones. What Darpa wants is a small, portable system that presents information in an order that would optimally synchronize Gamma and Theta waves. This would give soldiers a boost at retaining large quantities of information in high-stress situations, for longer periods of time. The goal, Darpa says, “increasing the total quantity of information reliably recalled from a given learning session over a minimum of three durations - 24 hours, one week, and one month, post exposure.”

Sounds great. But civilians one day getting the pink slip, thanks to this Pentagon push. Darpa, for one, is confident that the project will improve efficiency and cut staffing requirements across non-military sectors.”Commercially, this technology will provide a new capability to enable fewer personnel to handle increasingly greater quantities of information across a wide range of domains.”

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/07/total-recall-pentagon-looks-to-optimize-troops-minds/

Total Recall: Pentagon Looks To Optimize Troops Minds

Total Recall: Pentagon Looks To Optimize Troops Minds

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