Neuroenhancement in Military Personnel::Conceptual and Methodological Promises and Challenges

Military personnel face harsh conditions that strain their physical and mental well-being, depleting resources necessary for sustained operational performance. Future operations will impose even greater demands on soldiers in austere environments with limited support, and new training and technological approaches are essential. This report highlights the progress in cognitive neuroenhancement research, exploring techniques such as neuromodulation and neurofeedback, and emphasizes the inherent challenges and future directions in the field of cognitive neuroenhancement for selection, training, operations, and recovery

Drug use changes at the individual level : Results from a longitudinal, multisite survey in young europeans frequenting the nightlife scene

Background: Monitoring emerging trends in the increasingly dynamic European drug market is vital; however, information on change at the individual level is scarce. In the current study, we investigated changes in drug use over 12 months in European nightlife attendees. Method: In this longitudinal online survey, changes in substances used, use frequency in continued users, and relative initiation of use at follow-up were assessed for 20 different substances. To take part, participants had to be aged 18–34 years; be from Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, or the UK; and have attended at least 6 electronic music events in the past 12 months at baseline. Of 8,045 volunteers at baseline, 2,897 completed the survey at both time points (36% follow-up rate), in 2017 and 2018. Results: The number of people using ketamine increased by 21% (p < 0.001), and logarithmized frequency of use in those continuing use increased by 15% (p < 0.001; 95% CI: 0.07–0.23). 4-Fluoroamphetamine use decreased by 27% (p < 0.001), and logarithmized frequency of use in continuing users decreased by 15% (p < 0.001, 95% CI: −0.48 to −0.23). The drugs with the greatest proportion of relative initiation at follow-up were synthetic cannabinoids (73%, N = 30), mephedrone (44%, N = 18), alkyl nitrites (42%, N = 147), synthetic dissociatives (41%, N = 15), and prescription opioids (40%, N = 48). Conclusions: In this European nightlife sample, ketamine was found to have the biggest increase in the past 12 months, which occurred alongside an increase in frequency of use in continuing users. The patterns of uptake and discontinuation of alkyl nitrates, novel psychoactive substances, and prescription opioids provide new information that has not been captured by existing cross-sectional surveys. These findings demonstrate the importance of longitudinal assessments of drug use and highlight the dynamic nature of the European drug landscape

Neuroenhancement in Military Personnel: Conceptual and Methodological Promises and Challenges

Military personnel are subjected to prolonged operations in harsh and undesirable conditions characterized by severe environmental exposures, resource scarcity, and physical and mental encumbrance. Prolonged military operations under these conditions can degrade the already limited perceptual, cognitive, and emotional resources necessary to sustain performance on mission-related tasks. The complex multi-domain operations of the future battlespace are expected to further increase demands at even the lowest levels of the military echelon. These demands will be characterized with increasingly prolonged operations of small units in austere environments with limited resupply and degraded technological capabilities. It is therefore critical to identify new training and technological approaches to enable sustained, optimized, and/or enhanced performance of military personnel. Research in the international defence science community, academia, and industry has developed several promising neuroscientific strategies for pursuing this goal, including neuromodulatory and neurofeedback techniques. The present paper reviews the state of the art in cognitive neuroenhancement research and development from six participating nations: Canada, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, United Kingdom, and the United States of America. Six neuromodulation techniques are reviewed, including transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), transcranial focused ultrasound stimulation (tFUS), transcranial electrical stimulation (tES), transcutaneous peripheral nerve stimulation (tPNS), photobiomodulation, and cranial electrotherapy stimulation (CES). Three neurofeedback techniques are considered, including the use of electroencephalography (EEG), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) for monitoring brain states, with feedback loops enabled through machine learning and artificial intelligence. Participating nations summarize basic and applied research leveraging one or more of these neuromodulation and neurofeedback technologies for the purposes of enhancing Warfighter cognitive performance. The report continues by detailing the inherent methodological challenges of cognitive neuroenhancement and other considerations for conducting research, development, and engineering in this domain. The report concludes with a discussion of promising future directions in neuroenhancement, including biosensing, improved mechanistic and predictive modelling and software tools, developing non-invasive forms of deep-brain stimulation, testing emerging theoretical models of brain and behavior, and developing closed-loop neuroenhancement and humanmachine teaming methods. Emphasis is placed on the conceptual and methodological promises and challenges associated with planning, executing, and interpreting neuroenhancement research and development efforts in the context of Warfighter selection, training, operations, and recovery

What Is Targeted When We Train Working Memory? Evidence From a Meta-Analysis of the Neural Correlates of Working Memory Training Using Activation Likelihood Estimation

Working memory (WM) is the system responsible for maintaining and manipulating information, in the face of ongoing distraction. In turn, WM span is perceived to be an individual-differences construct reflecting the limited capacity of this system. Recently, however, there has been some evidence to suggest that WM capacity can increase through training, raising the possibility that training can functionally alter the neural structures supporting WM. To address the hypothesis that the neural substrates underlying WM are targeted by training, we conducted a meta-analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies of WM training using Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE). Our results demonstrate that WM training is associated exclusively with decreases in blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) responses in clusters within the fronto-parietal system that underlie WM, including the bilateral inferior parietal lobule (BA 39/40), middle (BA 9) and superior (BA 6) frontal gyri, and medial frontal gyrus bordering on the cingulate gyrus (BA 8/32). We discuss the various psychological and physiological mechanisms that could be responsible for the observed reductions in the BOLD signal in relation to WM training, and consider their implications for the construct of WM span as a limited resource