The device allowed her to use the robotic limb to grab a cup, shake hands, eat a chocolate bar, and even operate an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter simulator, Military.com reports. 
 

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) hopes to expand on the cutting-edge work to develop a pacemaker-sized device that might someday improve the memory of troops with traumatic brain injuries.
 

"We know we need a next-generation device that doesn't exist today," said Justin Sanchez, a program manager in DARPA's Biological Technologies Office in Arlington. "That's what these new programs are all about — not only understanding the brain and these conditions, but building the hardware that enables us to address those issues. You need both."
 

The new memory chip was an invention of necessity, military medical experts say. A decade of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan injured or killed more than 7,100 Americans, according to military reports. Up to two-thirds of those casualties involved bomb blasts, at least 1,800 vets have lost limbs, and hundreds of thousands have suffered from traumatic brain injuries that cause cognitive and memory problems.

Because of broad advances in battlefield medicine, many military personnel who would have died in combat a generation ago are surviving their injuries and coming home, needing care and rehabilitation.
 

DARPA's “Restoring Active Memory” project has sought to develop a prosthetic device that could aid in memory formation and recall for veterans with such injuries.
 

"The twist on this is he or she will be interacting with a prosthetic device," Sanchez said of the research, which caps 10 years of work on bionic limbs.
 

Jan Scheuermann has become something of a poster child for the DARPA program. The 55-year-old mother of two lost the use of her arms and legs to a rare neurological disorder known as spinocerebellar degeneration. In 2012, surgeons implanted a pair of pea-sized electrodes into the region of her brain that controls movement and was outfitted with a robotic arm.
 

After the operation she was able to manipulate the arm, developed by Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory — helping its makers refine the prosthetic device.
 

"That is the first program in the agency where you have humans interacting with really advanced prosthetic devices to do something extremely useful," Sanchez said, explaining that the brain sensors are designed to pick up signals from individual brain cells called neurons that drive body movements.
 

"When you intend to move your arm, for example, there are certain places in your brain that become active, the neurons that are there become active, and that activity can occur when you physically move your arm or even if you imagine moving your arm," Sanchez said.
 

The signals were relayed to a computer connected to the bionic arm, with software essentially translating Scheuermann’s thoughts into operating instructions to raise or lower the limb, and use the hands and fingers to grasp or move.
 

"Neurons in this particular part of your brain are tuned to certain movement directions," Sanchez said. "You can imagine how you can use that information to operate a robotic arm."
 

As remarkable as the progress has been, he said the next phase of the project is even more daunting — and exciting. Sanchez said DARPA hopes to use the system to understand and perhaps restore sensation in the central nervous system.
 

"It's really easy to say, ‘We want to bring sensation back,' but it's really difficult to actually do it," he said. "You have to go to a different part of the brain that's involved in the perception of touch — the primary central cortex — and again the challenge is the same: You have an electronic device that is measuring something and we need to translate that into signals that the brain understands."
 

Future applications may also useimplantable devices to more precisely identify and treat psychiatric diseases.
 

While the science behind the technology is fascinating, with a profound gee-whiz appeal, the researchers are keenly aware that the work has a profound impact on the human experience.
 

"We think of neurotechnology as hardware,” Sanchez said, “but we don't often think about it in terms of how it can improve somebody's life or change somebody's life."