The innovation could bring sweeping changes to the way PTSD, as well as depression and anxiety, is treated for millions of Americans.
 

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is working with scientists from the University of California-San Francisco, Lawrence Livermore National Lab, and Medtronic to create an implanted chip with electrodes extending into the brain to treat PTSD. The military hopes to have a prototype within five years and then plans to seek Food and Drug Administration approval.
 

The technology draws on a decade of research in treating disorders such as Parkinson's disease through a technique called deep brain stimulation. Low doses of electricity are pulsed into the brain in a way that is similar to how a defibrillator sends electricity to jumpstart a heart after cardiac arrest.
 

"DARPA is looking for ways to characterize which regions come into play for different conditions — measured from brain networks down to the single neuron level — and develop therapeutic devices that can record activity, deliver targeted stimulation, and most importantly, automatically adjust therapy as the brain itself changes," said Justin Sanchez, the DARPA program manager.
 

If it is successful, the research will produce new brain-monitoring capabilities that can help researchers better understand — and modify — the electrical patterns in the brain that signal anxiety, memory loss, and depression.