Neuroscience's Mind-Blowing Ideas For Future Battlefields

Direct interventions to enhance soldiers' capabilities could come in many forms, including new generations of neuropharmaceuticals, implants, and neural stimulations. DARPA's "peak soldier performance" program aims to improve metabolism on demand so a soldier could operate at a high level for three to five days without needing sleep or calories. DARPA is also interested in increasing the "bandwidth" of soldiers' brains. One idea is to develop something called a brain prosthesis, a chip that would improve normal mental functioning. Or perhaps extra copies of genes that code for certain neural receptor sites could be introduced into the brain to improve learning skills.