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posted by martyb on Friday May 30 2014, @03:33AM   Printer-friendly
from the helping-people-feel-better dept.

Researcher Jose Carmena has worked for years training macaque monkeys to move computer cursors and robotic limbs with their minds. He does so by implanting electrodes into their brains to monitor neural activity. Now, as part of a sweeping $70 million program funded by the U.S. military, Carmena has a new goal: to use brain implants to read, and then control, the emotions of mentally ill people. This week the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, awarded two large contracts to Massachusetts General Hospital and the University of California, San Francisco, to create electrical brain implants capable of treating seven psychiatric conditions, including addiction, depression, and borderline personality disorder.

 
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  • (Score: 1) by kumanopuusan on Saturday May 31 2014, @04:28PM

    by kumanopuusan (2575) on Saturday May 31 2014, @04:28PM (#49616)

    For the sake of argument, let's agree that the US military and everyone involved in it is evil. Even in that case, evil organizations can still do good things when it's in their own interests. This seems to be one of those cases. They genuinely want to fight mental illness among veterans because 1) they have to pay for treatment, 2) it's terrible PR when veterans aren't upstanding members of society, which then affects funding and recruitment, and 3) healthy, sane veterans can be reservists, which again decreases costs and improves the ability to fight wars.

    It truly may help veterans and the research will probably be applied to medical treatments with civilian applications. Feel free to whinge about the motivations of the Department of Defense, but don't piss on good news simply out of shortsightedness.