The prosthesis features a small array of electrodes implanted into the brain. Scientists are evaluating it in human patients after its successful laboratory testing in animals.
After receiving sensory input, brain creates a memory in the form of a complex electrical signal that moves via several regions of the hippocampus, which is its memory center.
The signal will be re-encoded at each region until it reaches the last region as a wholly different signal that is sent off for long-term storage.
The device depends on a new algorithm that mimics the electrical signaling used by the brain to translate short-term into permanent memories.
Researchers have gathered the neural data used to build the models and algorithms.
Ted Berger and Dong Song, both of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, identified a way to accurately mimic how a memory is translated from short-term memory into long-term memory.
They used data obtained by Deadwyler and Hampson, first from animals, and then from humans.
Even though there is no way of reading a memory, the prosthesis is designed to bypass a damaged hippocampal section and offer the next region with the correctly translated memory.
Berger said: "It’s like being able to translate from Spanish to French without being able to understand either language."
Researchers are now planning to send the translated signal back into the brain of a patient with damage at one of the regions in order to try to bypass the damage and allow to establish an accurate long-term memory.