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This Defense Intelligence Reference Document was produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency's Defense Warning Office under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications program and dated 23 March 2010. It surveys noninvasive and invasive brain-machine interface technologies, including EEG, MEG, fMRI, NIRS and implanted electrode arrays, that could control external devices without limb-operated interfaces. It concludes that noninvasive electrical monitoring is the most promising near-term approach. For the long term it favors invasive single-neuron cortical connections.
From the source: Release of 2026-09-18 Incident: 3/23/10, Las Vegas, Nevada. Released with redactions. This document is a Defense Intelligence Reference Document (DIRD), a technical reference format used by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to capture baseline knowledge on a specific topic for later analytic use. DIRDs are best understood as reference and synthesis products rather than as original research. It is one of 38 DIRDs produced under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP) between 2009 and 2011. Because AAWSAP’s scope permitted a broad range of supporting topics, not every DIRD in the series directly concerns aerospace systems or future threat assessment. The following summary reflects the DIRD’s scope and framing at the time of writing and should not be read as implying current validation of the concepts discussed. This DIRD surveys brain-machine interface technologies intended to allow users to control external devices without conventional manual controls, and it evaluates both noninvasive and invasive approaches for turning neural or related physiological signals into usable commands. The report reviews the underlying neural signals, distinguishes between open- and closed-loop control systems, and examines technologies including scalp-based electrical recording, magnetic and imaging-based methods, and implanted cortical interfaces, with particular attention to bandwidth, response time, signal quality, and practical usability. It concludes that, in the near term, the most practical systems are likely to be noninvasive electrical approaches that draw heavily on muscle and neural signals, while longer-term high-bandwidth control would likely require more advanced invasive interfaces capable of robust two-way communication with individual neurons. The document presents thought-based control of external devices as a research field with plausible assistive and specialized applications, while emphasizing that naturalistic, high-performance control remained constrained by major technical and physiological limits.
UNCLASSIFIED/ j POI\ OFFICIAL l:ISE 8Ptllf data is averaged over several electrodes time-locked to a stimulus (Reference 19). Both the previous methods record summed electrical activity of nominally 50,000 local neurons, thus large coherent group spiking activity7 is required to produce appreciable signal. EEG EEG-based BMI systems use pattern recognition among the several electrodes to transmit information. In closed-loop systems, audio or visual feedback is utilized. Tra ining on the system and adaptation by the process ing software can increase target detection efficiency, though some recent work shows that systems can be produced that nearly work right out of the box. Blankertz demonstrated a system that required only 20 minutes of training on naNe subjects (Reference 20). Development is partially being driven by the need to provide a means of communication or action on the environment to patients that have lost control of their body. Much of this clinically-orientated research has focused on 'locked-in' patients, who suffer from total paralysis following brainstem stroke or degenerative diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) (Reference 21). The goal has been to extract control signals either from surface EEG signals or from electrodes implanted near or within the cerebral cortex: ECoG (see next section on invasive technologies for details on ECoG). ALS deteriorates peripheral motor function before progression to cognitive areas. This greatly reduces a primary source of bioelectric noise, cranial and facial muscle action, and thus provides a reduced signal processing problem to decode neural signa ls. Successful communication has been established via EEG BMI in several studies based on both spiking activity and P300 signals (References 22-25). The response time to execute a command using these systems is measured in seconds. The results from ALS patients represent a best-case scenario for what could be accomplished using EEG-only sensors in a normal, healthy human who would have significant muscle noise to sift through. The number of electrodes and the time-consuming application of conducting gel make EEG arrays bulky and slow to put on. An improvement would be a reduction in the number of electrodes, typically a few dozen for traditional EEG, and electrodes that could operate without conducting gel. Commercial versions of dry-electrode devices are being released on the market from companies such as Neurosky, OCZ Technology, and Emotiv. 8 The Neurosky and Emotive systems claim proprietary processing algorithms, lack peer-reviewed literature supporting their claims, and even discuss using facial muscle movement to send signals (References 26, 27), raising doubt about whether neural signals are being measured at all. The NIA, for Neural Impulse Actuator, from OCZ clearly states that the electrodes pick up a combination of EEG, EMG, and EOG, 9 and that the algorithm is only interpreting the net signal patterns instead of trying to sort out the EEG component. 7 Spiking activity is the term used for recognition of action potentials. Spikes are fast and easy to recognize with electron ic triggering circuits, while more complex waveforms require additional processing . 8 Websites www .emotiv.com , www.ocztechnology .com , and www.neurosky .com , last accessed 12 May 2009. 9 The electrco-myogram (EMG) reads signals from muscle activity, in this case facial muscles. The electro ocu logram (EOG) measures electrical signals arising from muscles associated with the eyes. 7 UNCLASSIFIED/ fFOR OFFI&I.t.L W&E 8Pttlf
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Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 36 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.