Will the problem of memory loss one day be forgotten? In the next few weeks the Pentagon’s research-and-development arm will announce a plan to fund the creation of a brain implant to help wounded soldiers recover their mental faculties.
The research could also impact the millions of civilians affected by Alzheimer’s and other degenerative brain disorders. We know in broad outline what it takes to lay down a memory.
Throughout the years every single one of our experiences—from a major life event to the humdrum—has made and broken some of the vast network of connections that carry signals between the neurons in our brains: it is these patterns of connections that are central to our identity, our skills and how we think.
But traumatic brain injuries (TBI) can damage a person’s ability to retrieve memories, or to form or retain memories of new experiences. And since 2000, there have been almost a quarter million U.S. service personnel who have been diagnosed with TBI. That’s why the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has launched the Restoring Active Memory (RAM) program. the RAM program will seek to find new methods for analysis and decoding of the neural networks to understand how to reverse damage caused by a brain injury.
First, DARPA will try to create an implant that might bridge gaps in an injured brain, in order to help the injured overcome the loss of motor memories. Motor memories are those formed out of repetition—for example, when riding a bike or developing a one-handed tennis backhand.
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