Neuroscience (or neurobiology) is the scientific study of the nervous system. It is a multidisciplinary branch of biology that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, developmental biology, cytology, mathematical modeling and psychology to understand the fundamental and emergent properties of neurons and neural circuits.
Neuroanatomists studied the brain’s shape, its cellular structure, and its circuitry; neurochemists studied the brain’s chemical composition, including its lipids and proteins; neurophysiologists studied the brain’s bioelectric properties; and psychologists and neuropsychologists investigated the organization and neural substrates of behavior and cognition. The understanding of the biological basis of learning, memory, behavior, perception, and consciousness has been described by Eric Kandel as the “ultimate challenge” of the biological sciences.
Cognitive neuroscience addresses the questions of how psychological functions are produced by neural circuitry. The emergence of powerful new measurement techniques such as neuroimaging (e.g., fMRI, PET, SPECT), EEG, MEG, electrophysiology, optogenetics and human genetic analysis combined with sophisticated experimental techniques from cognitive psychology allows neuroscientists and psychologists to address abstract questions such as how cognition and emotion are mapped to specific neural substrates.
Advances and major investments by the broader community in neuroscience promise new insights for military applications. These include traditional areas of importance to the Army, such as learning, decision making, and performance under stress, as well as newer areas, such as cognitive fitness, brain–computer interfaces (an extension from earlier human–computer ergonomics), and biological markers of neural states.
Advances in such fields as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and bioengineering have resulted in instrumentation and techniques that can better assess the neural basis of cognition and enable visualization of brain processes.
Military has also been interested in Neuroscience for enhancing the cognitive performance of military personnel, speed their learning, or developing drugs that can keep the troops awake on the battlefield. Neuroscience has also been “militarized” or “weaponized,” including neurochemicals that can be used as weapons against the enemy.
These have the potential to provide new measures of training and learning for soldiers, while also shedding new light on traditional approaches to behavioral science used by the Army. Neural-behavioral indicators offer new ways to evaluate how well an individual trainee has assimilated mission critical knowledge and skills, and can also be used to provide feedback on the readiness of soldiers for combat.
The US Army is developing technologies meant to anticipate the behaviour and decisions of individuals as part of an effort to enhance manned-unmanned teaming that could one day enable autonomous systems to ‘autocomplete’ tasks for soldiers.
DARPA-funded research is working on everything from implanting brain chips to “neural dust” in an effort to alleviate the effects of traumatic experience in war. Invisible microwave beams produced by military contractors and tested on U.S. prisoners can produce the sensation of burning at a distance.
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