AAWSAP DIRD, Technological Approaches to Controlling External Devices, March 2010

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.

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loca lized in a manner where the top site will be below t he cortical surface. The electrode
assembly was then wrapped with Gel Foam (Pfizer, I nc. , New York) and then cemented
with dental acrylic (Reference 47). Once the experiment was concluded, precise location
of the cortical arrays was obtained by passing currents t hough the electrodes to cause
micro-lesioning, then post-mortem examination of brain slices could locate the lesions
and reconstruct the precise 3-D position of the electrodes (Figure 7). This test provided
an initial understa nding of bra in activity and the ability to utilize microelectrodes to
loca lize specific neu ral regions.
Sample slices from all implants
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Multipl sllces from 04 Left
Figure 7. Histology and Electrode Tracks. The left panel shows Nissl-stained coronal sections of sample slices
from all animals D1-D4 showing electrode tracks or lesio n marks for all seven imp lantations. The black line marks
the boundary between t he upper and lower layers. The right panel shows seven coronal sections arranged rostro
caudally, as indicated by the schematic, for one implant (D4Leh) showing alternating lesions and electrode tracks
which were used to reconstruct site locations. (Reference 47)
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