IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2017 - 13

industry viewpoint

Melanie Segado

Military Applications
of Invasive
Brain Stimulation

he United States
military has a long
tradition of driving
technological innovation and the field
of neurotechnology is no exception. The U.S. Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
ha s severa l neurotechnolog y
initiatives underway headed by
Dr. Justin Sanchez. Two of these
programs specifically focus on
the applications of invasive brain
stimulation. Systems-based neurotechnology for emerging therapies (SUBNETS) seeks to develop
technological solutions to treat
neuropsychiatric illness, notably
post-traumatic stress disorder
(PTSD), when psychotherapy and
pharmaceutical interventions are
ineffective [1]. Restoring active memory (RAM) aims to develop neurotechnology to mitigate the debilitating
memory loss associated with traumatic
brain injury, which has affected over
270 000 American service members
since 2000. Both of these programs
are part of the broader presidential
Brain Research through Advancing
Innovative Neurotechnologies®
BR AIN Initiative (https://www
.braininitiative.nih.gov/). In addition,
efforts have been focused on mitigating the effects of sleep deprivation, increasing training efficiency,
and even boosting decision making skills [3].

History of Electrical
Brain Stimulation
The scientific discovery that brain
function is driven by electrical impulses came about in the early
1800s when a scientist name Giovanni Aldini found himself locked in a
debate with the physicist Alessandro Volta about the nature of nerve
function. This debate led Aldini to
build on the work of bioelectromagnetics pioneer Luigi Galvani in order
to carry out the earliest known electrical brain stimulation experiments
in the hopes of achieving re-animation. It should come as no surprise
that Marie Shelley's Frankenstein
was written during this time period.
Aldini's attempts at reanimation
were ultimately unsuccessful, but
he went on to experiment with electrical shock as a potential cure for
various psychiatric conditions [4].
This early experimentation laid the
groundwork for the modern fields
of electro convulsive therapy (ECT)
and magnetic seizure therapy (MST),
and the less invasive transcranial

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2017.2654280
Date of publication: 6 March 2017

march 2017

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IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

electrical stimulation (TES) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).
While these techniques are certainly invasive in a colloquial sense,
they are still considered non-invasive
in a medical sense. Invasive brain
stimulation traditionally involves
implanting electrodes directly into
the brain in order to stimulate neuronal function. The first invasive
brain stimulation experiments were
conducted in rats by Olds and Milner in the 1950s [5]. In these experiments they found that stimulating
the regions of the brain that were
responsive to reward caused rats to
behave in a manner consistent with
receiving a reward. This was the first
evidence that electricity delivered
directly to the brain could be used
to modify behavior [5]. This work
was then extended by Jose Delgado
in the 1960s. Delgado theorized
that implanted electrical stimulation
could control all kinds of behavior,
and not just in rats. He chose to
test this hypothesis by attempting
to curb aggression in raging bulls.

https://www http://braininitiative.nih.gov/

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