DARPA investment in peripheral nerve interfaces for prosthetics, prescriptions, and plasticity

BACKGROUND Peripheral nerve interfaces have emerged as alternative solutions for a variety of therapeutic and performance improvement applications. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has widely invested in these interfaces to provide motor control and sensory feedback to prosthetic limbs, identify non-pharmacological interventions to treat disease, and facilitate neuromodulation to accelerate learning or improve performance on cognitive, sensory, or motor tasks. In this commentary, we highlight some of the design considerations for optimizing the safety and efficacy of peripheral nerve interfaces based on application space. We also discuss some of the ethical considerations that accompany these advances.

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