Neuroscience and War

There is an interesting article entitled "Neuroscience, National Security & the "War on Terror" It gives a good overview of the US military and its programs in relation to neuroscience. The tone of the article may be a little negative, but there are a lot interesting links in that post to the various projects that DARPA is undertaking.

Mind-machine interfaces, also called "neural prosthetics." Living robots" whose movements can be controlled via brain implants. Research has successfully been carried out on "roborats" and "robodogs" for mine clearing and other dubious purposes. "Cognitive feedback helmets" that provide commanders or their medical surrogates the ability to remotely view an individual soldiers' mental state. MRI and fMRI technologies for what has been called "brain fingerprinting" as an interrogation tool or airport screening for "terrorists."

I'm not quite so pessimistic myself as this author is about our military. I think a lot of this stuff may find beneficial uses in civilian areas and I tend to think that war in general is on the decline. Brian Wang from the Next Big Future blog recently did an interesting post about our military's attempt at creating super soldiers.

"Projects in pipeline range from drugs that will boost muscles and energy by a factor of 10, akin to steroids…on steroids"

"A major focus is on helping the soldier’s body to better deal with trauma and damage. One such is the “pain vaccines” coming out...."

It's amazing, though, that a lot of this stuff would have been considered science fiction a short while ago, but now this new technology is quickly coming to fruition. This technology could have a large impact on our society and it brings up many issues that we will have to grapple with.