DARPA Wants to Hack Your Nervous System to Turn You Into a Super-Spy
If you have seen the Matrix Trilogy, you must be familiar with the nervous system hacking through which Neo learns super skills like Tae-kwon-do and Judoka. Imagine yourself in place of Neo, mastering Mandarin and becoming fluent in Chinese — in months, weeks and even days. This is not a Science Fiction. This is a new program by DARPA ( Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) intending to tweak your central nervous system to make you learn better an1d faster.
The goal of the new DARPA program, called Targeted Neuroplasticity Training, is to stimulate your peripheral nervous system, the network of nerves on the outside of your brain and spinal cord, to facilitate the development of cognitive skills.
TNT could become much faster and a cheaper way to train people on various fields like foreign languages, Cryptography, Intelligence Analysis and more.
Since DARPA is the first and foremost initiative in the Department of Defense Establishment, U.S military personnel could quickly learn to understand , decode and convert intelligence information say like German and Urdu. Training from DARPA could help them do it faster and better than the present human ability.
“Recent research has shown that stimulation of certain peripheral nerves, easily and painlessly achieved through the skin, can activate regions of the brain involved with learning,” Doug Weber, TNT program manager, said in a DARPA press release. “This natural process of synaptic plasticity is pivotal for learning, but much is unknown about the physiological mechanisms that link peripheral nerve stimulation to improved plasticity and learning.”
According to Weber, the signals which comes from TNT’s program may release some neurochemicals that reopens the “Critical Period” when your brain is good at retaining information. It is almost like our adult brain learning like it’s still our childhood brain.
The connection between the better learning and peripheral nervous system is not the complete or exact science yet, This program targets to spend lots of time to figure out how the nerves in the brain and spinal cord are stimulating with a non-invasive device.
What is beyond the Military ?
Its quite obvious that TNT is very attractive to military. Its implications are even very bigger than what we think. TNT could also be the biggest foreign-language problem in the world history.
This could take half or quarter long for our traditional education with fast learning and a powerful retention rate.
This is not only about the future learning skills at fast rates, but everyone could be dealt with physiological and emotional stress that comes in wartime. DARPA would be figuring out on how to make spies and movie directors by now.
