What is a memorial augmentation implant?
Memory augmentation implants, publicly in the early stages of careful search and development, are a type of neural prosthesis: a technological extendedness of the nervous system that seeks to bring back lost function, usually due to ailment or injury, or to supplement perpendicular function [1]. Memory augmentation implants have power to be placed within the brain and office to either restore lost memories or scrape out ones that are unwanted. With the various benefits of memory augmentation implants, in that place are also ethical concerns, which force it imperative to keep this enlarging field of technology regulated.
What progress has been made?
So estranged, there are two separate research teams that require made progress on the front of developing remembrance augmentation implants. One is a team of scientists, led through Sam A. Deadwyler, out of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at University of Southern California, Los Angeles (USC) and the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology at Wake Forest University. This team has created a recollection augmentation implant that has been tried so far in rats and primates with some success [2] [3] [4]. Their greatest part recent test of a memory addition implant occurred in 2013. They luckily repaired and enhanced the memory encoded in the hippocampus of primates [4]. This fruit made the team hopeful that they devise one day be able to appliance similar technology in humans to heal lost memory function.
The other existence working to make progress on this technology is a dispose of institutions funded by DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. These institutions embrace University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), University of Pennsylvania, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. This exploration, coined Project: “Restoring Active Memory”, is interest of Obama’s BRAIN initiative what one. hopes to take strides in furthering our mind of the brain to solve real world problems [5]. These institutions receive been tasked by DARPA to design a celebrity augmentation implant, mainly for veterans through traumatic brain injuries. This project began inside of the last year and very inconsiderable information has been released about its progress.
It is price noting that both of these groups regard made limited progress; it is not over and above clear whether purposeful manipulation of human reminiscence with this type of implant is feasible. Even though working devices have been created, they be delivered of not been tested on humans, and the scientists following them are still working on pinpointing in what state exactly they interact with the human brain to form. The DARPA website is illustrative of this flash of wit; it cites several significant intermediary goals that exigency to be reached before the application of a memory augmentation implant in humans force be possible [6].
Who could do a good turn from this technology?
The development of this technology is mightily geared to help individuals with good for wounds brain injuries (TBI’s) and idiocy [7]. A traumatic brain injury is understood during the time that any damage to the head that causes disruptions in the brain [8]. The occurrence of memory problems caused by vulnerary brain injuries depends on the harshness of the injury; most commonly, these problems include an inability to remember the result that caused the injury and pinch learning or remembering any new denunciation [9].
From 2000 to 2011, a total of 235,046 service members athwart all branches of the military were diagnosed with a TBI [10]. So many benefit members have been affected by this malady in the last decade that traumatic brain injuries have been dubbed the “stamp injury” of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan [11]. This detriment is not exclusive to combat admitting; another 1.7 million civilians are moreover affected each year in the United States [12].
Furthermore, individuals by dementia could benefit from this technology. Dementia is a ill-defined term used to describe a curtail in mental ability that interferes with everyday life [13]. Alzheimer’s disorder, the most common type of insanity, causes memory loss that becomes other severe over time, accompanied by other debilitating symptoms [14]. As of 2014, near 5 million Americans over the time of 65 have been affected ~ means of Alzheimer’s disease, which is from one place to another 11% or 1 in 9. This sum up is expected to increase dramatically during the time that the age of the “Baby Boomer” family shifts. It is estimated that through 2029, the elderly ages 65 and older decree make up 20% of the undivided US population, compared to almost 14% in 2012 [15]. As of at this moment, there are drugs and cognitive therapies that be possible to temporarily improve symptoms of dementias, only no cure [16]. Moreover, with the forecasted grow in prevalence of dementia, there is a august need for a device that have power to restore individual memory capacity.
The focus of research right now is attached developing implants with the capability to replace memory capacity in order to take turn with those who urgently need the succor in order to function. Memory cancelling is another possible use of recollection augmentation implants.
What are potential moral concerns of this device?
Although these implants are suppress in their early stages of disentanglement, there are already ethical concerns around their development and implementation. If clinical human trials confer begin with this device, as they are planned to, there is risk to the patient exactly to the nature of the placement of these implants interior the brain as well as their purpose. to change memory. Although researchers strength have data from animals that shows the devices operate, they cannot truly give informed acquiescence to a participant in a study trial because researchers cannot be firm of what will actually happen [17]. Memory is a constitutional part of a person’s identity, and even supposing the gains of altering it could be great, there is a looming risk of a mistake that could scrape out part of what makes a human frame unique.
If a working, approved shift emerges from all of this careful search there will be a concern, fair-minded as there is for all neural prosthetics, in various places how it should be used, specifically whether only on account of restoration or also for supplementation [18]. Individuals with TBI or dementia could greatly do a good turn from having their memory capacity restored. But that which about non-impaired individuals? Should they wish access to technology to selectively obliterate their memories or, potentially, to be obliged immense amounts of information downloaded rectilinear into their brains? If these implants answer the purpose become commercially available and if they are dear, they could further class divisions. As through most medical technology, it is apparent that as this technology develops, it must also be regulated.
References:
[1] NIH. “Neural Interfaces Program.” National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. http://www.ninds.nih.gov/examination/npp/.
[2] Berger, Theodore W., Robert E. Hampson, Dong Song, Anushka Goonawardena, Vasilis Z. Marmarelis, and Sam A. Deadwyler. “A cortical neural prosthesis since restoring and enhancing memory.” Journal of Neural Engineering 8, in ~ degree. 4 (2011): 046017.
[3] Hampson, Robert E., Greg A. Gerhardt, Vasilis Marmarelis, Dong Song, Ioan Opris, Lucas Santos, Theodore W. Berger, and Sam A. Deadwyler. “Facilitation and replacement of cognitive function in primate prefrontal cortex by a neuroprosthesis that utilizes minicolumn-characteristic neural firing.” Journal of neural engineering 9, ~t one. 5 (2012): 056012.
[4] Hampson, Robert E., Dong Song, Ioan Opris, Lucas M. Santos, Dae C. Shin, Greg A. Gerhardt, Vasilis Z. Marmarelis, Theodore W. Berger, and Sam A. Deadwyler. “Facilitation of memorial encoding in primate hippocampus by a neuroprosthesis that promotes tax-specific neural firing.” Journal of neural engineering 10, nay. 6 (2013): 066013.
[5] “BRAIN Initiative.” The White House. http://www.whitehouse.gov/divide/brain-initiative.
[6] DARPA. “Restoring Active Memory (RAM).” Biological Technologies Office. http://www.darpa.mil/ our_work/bto/programs/restoring_active_memory_ram.aspx.
[7] The CDC, NIH, DoD, and VA Leadership Panel. “Report to Congress in c~tinuance Traumatic Brain Injury in the United States: Understanding the Public Health Problem in the midst of Current and Former Military Personnel.” (2013).
[8] Aftandilians, Tania. “Traumatic Brain Injury: The “Signature Injury” of the Iraq War.” Berkeley Scientific Journal 12, ~t one. 1 (2009).
[9] Alzheimer’s Association. “Traumatic Brain Injury.” alz.org. http://www.alz.org/idiocy/ traumatic-brain-injury-head-trauma-symptoms.asp.
[10] Cronk, Terri Moon. “DARPA Developing Implants to Help with TBI Memory Loss.” U.S. Department of Defense. Last modified July 15, 2014. Accessed December 22, 2014. http://www.defense.gov/information/ newsarticle.aspx?id=122673.
[11] CDC. “Traumatic Brain Injury in the United States: Fact Sheet.” Centers as being Disease Control and Prevention. Accessed December 22, 2014. http://www.cdc.gov/traumaticbraininjury/ get_the_facts.html.
[12] Cronk, Terri Moon. “DARPA Developing Implants to Help by TBI Memory Loss.” U.S. Department of Defense. Last modified July 15, 2014. Accessed December 22, 2014. http://www.defense.gov/tidings/ newsarticle.aspx?id=122673.
[13] Alzheimer’s Association. “What Is Dementia?” alz.org. Accessed December 22, 2014. http://www.alz.org/what-is-dementia.asp.
[14] Alzheimer’s Association. “What Is Alzheimer’s?” alz.org. Accessed December 22, 2014. http://www.alz.org/alzheimers_disease_what_is_alzheimers.asp.
[15] Pollard, Kevin, and Paola Scommegna. “Just How Many Baby Boomers Are There?” Population Reference Bureau. http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2002/JustHowManyBabyBoomers AreThere.aspx
[16] Alzheimer’s Association. “What Is Dementia?” alz.org. Accessed December 22, 2014. http://www.alz.org/which-is-dementia.asp.
[17] Chhatbar, Pratik. “The future of implantable neuroprosthetic devices: ethical considerations.” Journal of dilatory-term effects of medical implants 19, none. 2 (2009).
[18] Ibid.
Image References:
[1] Human brain augmentation. Image. Truthfall. September 17, 2012. Accessed December 22, 2014. http://truthfall.com/microchipped-humans-incubus-becomes-reality/.
[2] Brain electrical exercise. Image. iO9. January 31, 2012. Accessed December 22, 2014. http://io9.com/ 5881106/in what way-does-your-brain-create-short-name-memories.
Erin Pontius, a student at the George Washington University, intends to follow as an example a double major in psychology and the community health as well as a smaller in sociocultural anthropology. She is self-seeking in the ethics of biotechnologies and in their unbounded potential to improve lives worldwide. Follow The Triple Helix Online on Twitter and join us on Facebook.
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