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 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. DARPA's research team acknowledged that creating an interface and communicating with the signals of one million neurons "sounds lofty," but Alveda says their research will only map out a foundation for more complex research in the future. But if we're successful in delivering rich sensory signals directly to the brain, NESD will lay a broad foundation for new neurological therapies."
In March, Musk launched Neuralink, a medical research company that creates brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). A few weeks after Musk announced Neuralink, Facebook said it was developing a way for people to "type" by thought. Last year the U.S. military's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced a $60 million program to develop an implantable neural interface. DARPA's goal is to develop a device that can record 1 million neurons simultaneously and stimulate at least 100,000 in the brain.