Have you ever wished that all that crap you had to study for a history exam would be possible if you had a brain implant? Well, now's your chance:

Brain Implant Restores and Enhances Memory Formation

Theodore Berger, professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering, is developing what is essentially an artificial hippocampus. The hippocampus is a part of the brain responsible for long-term memory formation. Berger hopes that his neural implant will benefit those with brain injuries or diseases such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s.

Most recently, in a joint study with Wake Forest University, experiments demonstrated that an early prototype of the artificial hippocampus works in the brains of rats. In one of the experiments, researchers had rats learn a task, pressing one lever rather than another to receive a reward. Electrical probes recorded the rats’ brain activity between CA3 and CA1, two regions of the hippocampus largely responsible for converting short-term memory into long-term memory. Researchers next used drugs to block the interaction between CA3 and CA1, which caused the rats to remember what they learned for only 5-10 seconds. The device was activated, and the pharmacologically blocked rats were shown to be able to form long-term memories once again, only this time with the help of the neural implant.

In addition to showing that the device works on artificially handicapped brains, using the device on the brains of normal rats enhanced their memory-forming capabilities as well.

BioBolt Brain Implant Transmits Neural Signals Through Skin Conduction

Researchers at the University of Michigan have developed a brain implant, called the BioBolt, that captures neural signals from within the brain and transmits them to an external device by using the skin as a conductor. The BioBolt is embedded within the skull directly under the skin. It is about the circumference of a dime, with a thumbnail-sized film of microcircuits attached to the bottom that makes direct contact with the brain surface. Neural signals are amplified and filtered, and then transmitted through the skin to a computer. Because it does not penetrate the cortex and uses the skin to transmit data, it is minimally invasive (although it still needs a hole to be drilled in the skull) and uses little power. The researchers aim to use it as a brain-computer interface to operate a computer, or eventually to reactivate paralyzed limbs. Other potential applications are controlling epilepsy and diagnosing brain diseases like Parkinson’s.

Think of all the stuff you can learn with this thing in a short amount of time...