US military to use brain scans for dogged recruitment?

Fri, 1 Feb 2013

The US military might implement brain scanning to screen recruits in the future, under an intriguing plan to develop new technology.

But before recruitment agency readers choke on their lunch fearing their businesses could be replaced by CT scanners – they should rest assured that the very early stage plans are only being developed for canine hires.

Now, get ready to get lost in acronyms: the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics (OUSD AT&L) has received from government agency the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) a proposal for a project entitled Functional Imaging to Develop Outstanding Service Dogs. The acronym there, in case you missed, is FIDOS, which just goes to show that the guys at DARPA do have a sense of fun.

The objective of the proposal, which can be viewed online, speaks for itself: “This effort will capitalise on first-of-its-kind neural imaging feasibility work; demonstrating functional brain activation in unrestrained dogs in response to handler cues.

“The objective of this effort is two-fold; first, to optimise the selection of ideal service dogs, both in operational military and therapy environments, and second, to use real-time neural feedback to optimise canine training, shortening training duration, reducing costs and increasing learned responses.”

Better selection and screening, it notes, would “reduce training time and costs, and result in more effective service dogs”.

Mainstream recruitment watch out…