Brain-Translating Device May Soon Become a Reality

A brain-translating device is being developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a research arm under the United States military. The agency hopes to come up with an interface that will allow a computer to read and translate brain signals.

DARPA announced the program in a press release Tuesday, calling this the Neural Engineering System Design (NESD). "Today's best brain-computer interface systems are like two supercomputers trying to talk to each other using an old 300-baud modem," said program head Phillip Alveda. "Imagine what will become possible when we upgrade our tools to really open the channel between the human brain and modern electronics."

The Next Web reported that the NESD device would be small -- about the size of a cube of sugar. However, it will be a powerful device as it aims to be read communications between a brain and a computer with the help of binary codes.

If successful, the NESD device could potentially be used to improve auditory and visual devices with better quality than what's being currently used. The Washington Post reported that what DARPA is attempting to achieve could also give its military power a boost, given that radar and communication signals can be manipulated or jammed, despite using anti-jamming equipment.

Per Gizmodo, DARPA has been developing brain-translating devices for years but many of these projects have failed to move forward due to the limitations of current technology. However, DARPA is not in a hurry to finish their NESD project this time around and the agency admits it will be awhile before the technology can be tested and used in actual situations.

For now, everything is still in the development stage. The whole program will need to go through "integrated breakthroughs across numerous disciplines including neuroscience, synthetic biology, low-power electronics, photonics, medical device packaging and manufacturing, systems engineering, and clinical testing," as mentioned in the press release.

There have been other researches that attempted to do the same brain signal interpretations. Back in 2013, Brown University engineers developed a wireless interface that allowed the brain and a computer to communicate, per Extreme Tech.

The device looked like a pacemaker that was implanted to test subjects like pigs and monkeys during its 13-month study. The research was aimed at finding ways to help people with Parkinson's disease but, with size, safety and reliability issues to address, the human trials have yet to be done.