Military Wants To Super-Charge Troop Smarts – Danger Room
The Pentagon’s been trying to get ahead of the curve on neuroscience for years, toying with ideas like mind reading lie-detection and performance degrading drugs for enemy combatants. Now, they’re launching a major effort in harnessing neuroscience to better prepare soldiers for the mental rigors of modern warfare.
In a series of small business solicitations released last week, the Office of the Secretary of Defense outlined plans for a new “Cognitive Readiness Technology” program, with the intent of “making our warfighters as cognitively strong as they are physically strong.”
Neuroscience is at the locus of the program, because before they can super-charge cognition, Pentagon scientists need to understand exactly how it works. So they’re launching “Neuromorphic Models of Human Social Cultural Behavior (HSCB),” in an effort to accurately model human cognition, including how we perceive, learn and retain information.
