Making a Human Memory Chip
From: IEEE Spectrum - 00/2014 - page 16
By: Eliza Strickland

DARPA project could lead to implanted devices within four years

In the next four years, Michael Kahana, director of the Computational Memory
Lab at the University of Pennsylvania, 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 US 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.

Kahana's team will start by searching for biological markers of memory
formation and retrieval. For this early research, the test subjects will be
hospitalized epilepsy patients who have already had electrodes implanted to
allow doctors to study their seizures. Kahana will record the electrical
activity in these patients' brains while they take memory tests.

Read the abstract at:
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=6882974

Read the entire article at:
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6882974

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

Restoring Active Memory Program Poised to Launch
http://www.darpa.mil/NewsEvents/Releases/2014/07/09.aspx