A U.S. Military DARPA program is putting $65 million into the creation of an implantable device that will provide data-transfer between human brains and the digital world.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the emerging technology organization under the U.S. Department of Defense, announced Monday that five research institutions and one private corporation will be recipients of the brain-to-computer research grants. The program seeks to heighten hearing, sight and other sensory perception as well as creating a digital brain implant to relay neuron transmissions directly to digital devices.
The recipients of the $65 million Materials for Transduction (MATRIX) program grants are: Brown University; Columbia University; University of California, Berkeley; Fondation Voir et Entendre (The Seeing and Hearing Foundation); John B. Pierce Laboratory and San Jose, California-based Paradromics, Inc.
CEO Matt Angle’s Paradromics Inc. is the mind-to-machine “Broadband for the brain” research company set to rake in as much as $18 million from the contract. He tells MIT Technology Review that the funding comes with a “moonshot” list of requirements, including the implant’s size being smaller than a nickel and the mandatory ability to send signal back into the brain.
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