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DARPA Investing In Electric Brain Stimulation To Train Snipers Quickly
New submitter Morganth writes "According to New Scientist, researchers at DARPA are investing efforts in transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) machines to cut the time it takes to train snipers. From the article: 'a 2-milliamp current will run through the part of the brain associated with object recognition — an important skill when visually combing a scene for assailants.' The story also gives a nice explanation on the psychology of 'flow' — the state that experts tend to enter (e.g. programmers, tennis players, pianists) when focusing on their work." We covered similar research done on mice to improve their memory in September.
TFA doesn't mention snipers. The description is of someone firing rapidly to supress an attack.
Sniper teams (not just one person) work slowly and methodically by comparison. Identifying the target isn't done under the kind of pressure described in the article. And there's figuring the range and windage as well. Not something done at that kind of an almost instinctive level.
And then there's the issue of muscle memory. A lot of shooting (accurately) depends on eye-hand coordination and motor learning to control superfluous movements that can mess up a shot. Will this stimulation do anything for that?
Have gnu, will travel.
My greatest fear with brain enhancement technology is that it creates a super-class of humans. Those who have the ability to pay for the technology will have a majorly unfair advantage against those who don't, creating a dangerously elite group of people.