DARPA Project Starts Building Human Memory Prosthetics
From: IEEE Spectrum - 08/27/2014
By: Eliza Strickland

The first memory-enhancing devices could be implanted within four years 

"They're trying to do 20 years of research in 4 years," says Michael Kahana
in a tone that's a mixture of excitement and disbelief. Kahana, director of
the Computational Memory Lab at the University of Pennsylvania, is mulling
over the tall order from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA). In the next four years, he and other researchers are charged with
understanding the neuroscience of memory and then building a prosthetic
memory device that's ready for implantation in a human brain.

DARPA's first contracts under its Restoring Active Memory (RAM) program
challenge two research groups to construct implants for veterans with
traumatic brain injuries that have impaired their memories. Over 270,000 U.S.
military service members have suffered such injuries since 2000, according to
DARPA, and there are no truly effective drug treatments. This program builds
on an earlier DARPA initiative focused on building a memory prosthesis, under
which a different group of researchers had dramatic success in improving
recall in mice and monkeys.

Read the entire article at:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/bionics/darpa-project-starts-building-human-memory-prosthetics

Links:
Computational Memory Lab
http://memory.psych.upenn.edu/Main_Page

Restoring Active Memory
http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/BTO/Programs/Restoring_Active_Memory_RAM.aspx