US$40m towards brain implant that could restore soldiers' memories

US military researchers have awarded US$40 million towards developing a new kind of brain implant that may help restore memories in wounded soldiers and civilians.

The work represents a major scientific leap forward, but many hurdles remain before it can be shown to work in people, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) said.

The hope is that some day, a wireless, implantable device will bridge gaps in the injured brain and make it easier to remember events, places, and context - known as declarative memories.

This kind of recall can be lost in traumatic brain injury, which has affected 270,000 US military service people since 2000 and touches 1.7 million US civilians each year.

"Our vision is to develop neuroprosthetics for memory recovery in patients living with brain injury and dysfunction," said Dr Justin Sanchez, manager of the Restoring Active Memory programme at Darpa.

"Those service members have paid the ultimate price in service of our nation, so it is our great responsibility to try to come up with new and innovative - not only scientific but medical - approaches that can help repay some of that debt."

Darpa said it was carefully weighing the ethics of such experiments and was consulting with neuroscience experts about potential pitfalls.