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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.
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UNCLASSIFIED/ /POR: err1e1At l:191!! er•t I rotate the platform supporting the fish. The lamprey was able to stabilize the hybrid system, and this compensatory effect was most efficient in combination with undulating swimming motions. The experimental setup is seen in Figure 13. These studies demonstrate the feasibility of closed-loop interactions between a specific region of the nervous system and an artificial device. Closed-loop brain-machine interfaces offer an unparalleled opportunity to investigate how plastic changes can be guided by modulating the input signals of the neurons based on the behaviors generated by the output of the same neurons. Furthermore, in such hybrid systems it is possible to replace the neural tissue with a computational model, thus providing a direct means for testing the predictions of specific hypotheses about neural information processing. Adaptation to the variable dynamics of the limbs and of the limb environment has generated an increasing volume of research that is relevant to brain-machine interfaces. TRIALS USING HUMAN SUBJECTS Testing BMis on normal human subjects presents ethical dilemma since any volunteer outside of the research team itself would likely have difficulty understanding all of the risks involved in neural implantation. Even well-known volunteers such as Jans Naumann now admit they truly did not understand the risks involved and are considering having chronic implants removed. 19 Not all human trials have produced such poor results. Significant ECoG arrays are implanted in epileptic patients prior to surgery to provide high resolution spatial localization of seizure activity (Reference 45). In these clinical tests, the arrays are implanted in the patient and then monitored until seizures takes place. This procedure can take more than a week and the patient has little to do between random onsets of seizure activity. Epilepsy is generally considered a localized pathology, almost always lateralized to the right or left lobe. The remaining brain networks, especially from the nonseizure half of the brain, are generally normal. This provides an opportunity for cohort cognitive studies since they represent minimal additional risk for volunteers undergoing the procedure as a medical necessity. Blakely et al. utilized such a patient to decode brain network patterns associated with different English phonemes (Reference 52). Mapping all of the phonemes could constitute an open-loop technology to communicate without speaking using normal language instead of learned motor patterns. Schalk and colleagues utilized a sample of five pre-surgical epileptics to demonstrate ECoG to control one- and two-dimensional cursor movement. Movement times to target were on the order of 1-2 seconds with up to 75 percent accuracy with training time on the order of 30 minutes or less (Reference 53). Spinal cord injury (SCI) is another clinical condition where the normal brain is intact and ECoG arrays may be implanted for testing a neuroprosthetic. Researchers in Toronto recently reported good hand movement and grasping control using ECoG arrays (Reference 54). Similarly, Hochberg showed good results in 2-D cursor control, but still seconds or more slower than a mouse control, even after 90 days of training. A following task was more successful, though the accuracy for use in fine manipulations needs improvement (Reference 55). 19 Jans Naumann was the first recipient of a second-generation artificial vision system (AVS) designed by the Dobelle Institute. The AVS project was based in New York, but the procedures themselves were conducted in Lisbon, Portugal, to avoid U.S. prohibitions against implant surgery. UNCLASSIFIED/ /POR: err1e1At 0!11!! OHLI 22
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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.