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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.
“Anderson”1 page
UNCLASSIFIED/ fFOlil OFFI&I.t.k WIiii 8Plklf NONINVASIVE MAGNETIC DEVICES Detection of magnetic fields arising from neural activity using MEG or a future technology have the same inherent limitations as EEG-only noninvasive sensors. Resolving these signals from background in any naturalistic env ironment will not occur without the development of a disruptive technology in shielding that is portable and lightweight enough to be worn comfortably on the head, and will attenuate background amplitude nearly 10 orders of magnitude across the entire range of neural signal frequencies, and the entire range of frequencies where the detection electronics may be sensitive. Body-temperature superconducting materials may accomplish the shielding if engineering development continues, and these could be combined with atomic magnetometer technology to produce a portable system, though the inherent limitations of the method will still be present. INVASIVE TECHNOLOGIES - GENERAL, OPTICAL, AND EX-VIVO ENGINEERING All invasive technologies will have to undergo substantial rigorous testing to determine the long-term side-effects of implantation and operation, as well as drift in the operational performance with extended use. Several pre-clinical devices detailed above and discussed below show promise, but the handful of human trials show that direct interface technologies based on proximal action potential stimulation and detection are still a long way off from practical application since the trials themselves in duplex operation show functional failure after only a matter of weeks. The mammalian auditory system is well studied, and the cochlear implant has been in use and continued development for more than 30 years, and there is yet to be any practical application for implanting a cochlear device into a normal healthy individual. Proximal electrode interfaces do not appear to be the answer for high bandwidth BMI, and further development in the machine-biology contact is required. If the 30-year advancement of cochlear is a realistic guide of innovation, the proximal electrical technology path to success is 30-40 years off save for a disruptive advance in the development of penetrating electrodes. Two invasive research paths that are promising are optical stimulation and gating, and ex-vivo growth of neural cells on physical circuits. The advantage of optical stimulation and gating is that one could theoretically design an optical link to act as a connected input dendrite on a single neuron. Theoretically, one should also be able to use spectroscopic sampling to determine if an action potential is progressing down an axon, thus providing a single neuron output (read or monitor) capability as well. This invasive but noncontact full-duplex information channel would effectively hook-up the physical computer seamlessly to the network structure of the brain. Proof of principle studies in this technology could emerge at any time, and given the demonstrated plasticity of neural networks in both closed-loop visual feedback and lamprey experiments, could provide a disruptive path for advancement of BMI. The ex-vivo growth of neural tissue on electrode arrays provides a controlled platform for: • Testing long-term effects of electrode use on proximal neural tissue. UNCLASSIFIED/ /FOlil OFFI€llAL 1:181! 8Htl" 26
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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.