Solution For Failing Memory? Surgically Implanted Brain Chips Coming Very Soon

Over the past five years the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has been working on helping people with traumatic brain injuries recover.

Now, scientists may have a way to do just that, and it involves kinda half-turning them into cyborgs.

Last year, two groups working one this problems posted some amazing results with these kinds of memory-aid devices. Their work could do wonders to help head-trauma victims recover their short term memory capabilities

In a video from one trial at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, a patent is subjected to a basic word memory test. However, he's dejected when he's only able to recall 3 of the 12 words told to him. Miraculously though, in a second trial, he manages to recite all 12 words without hesitation. "No kidding, you got all of them!" a researcher in the video says.

This device is the work of Michael Kahana, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, in partnership with medical technology company Medtronic Plc. When connected to the left temporal cortex, it monitors electrical activity in the brain and forecasts whether a lasting memory will be created.

"Just like meteorologists predict the weather by putting sensors in the environment that measure humidity and wind speed and temperature, we put sensors in the brain and measure electrical signals," Kahana says. The idea is that, if the device detects a signal that's too weak, it zaps the patient a little bit.

The shock so to speak is so minimal as to be undetectable by the person with the implant. However, it's enough to strengthen the signal in most cases and increase the chances of creating a memory of it. In their trials, the scientists found their prototype could boost memory consistently by between 15 to 18 percent.

Another group that's had a lot of luck in their trials is from the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in North Carolina, in partnership with the University of Southern California. Their device was capable of improving memory as much as 37 percent.

Again, both of these devices aren't meant to let to remember what you had for breakfast on August 1 three years ago. Rather, it's for patients having trouble with short-term memory after a traumatic injury. People who seriously struggle with everyday things you take for granted like remembering where you kept your house keys five minutes ago, or whether you took your critical medication today.

These researches worked by first studying brains and the way they fire neurons. By studying these patients and testing them afterwards, they were able to pinpoint the kind of electrical activity happening when a memory is formed properly and when it fails. Accordingly then, they've been able to program the device to kick in in the latter case.

So far, both groups have only tested their prototypes on epileptic patients that already had electrodes implanted in their brains to monitor seizures. Right now, these devices require unwieldy hardware that won't really fit in your head. The trick now then is to minimize it to something the size of a computer chip that can sit alongside your brain.

In order to make this more accessible to the general public however, scientists also eventually hope to get to the point where they can do away with the voluntary brain surgery altogether. Maybe it'll be a circuit on a sticker of some sort that you tape to your skull, or inside a cap. We'll never really know what the final product could look like until we get there.