Intel agencies want to know how your brain works

The research arm for the intelligence community wants scientists to decode how the brain connects concepts, with the goal of applying breakthroughs to help intelligence analysts and linguists make sense of data more efficiently.

The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity is seeking researchers to develop theories on how the brain resolves ambiguities and makes inferences, and wants them to test their hypotheses by interpreting patterns of brain activity scanned from imaging technology, government documents show.

“Understanding how the human brain represents conceptual knowledge is a step toward building new analysis tools that acquire, organize and wield knowledge with unprecedented proficiency,” a pre-solicitation notice reads.

“Such understanding may lead to the development of novel techniques for training intelligence analysts and linguists,” it adds.

IARPA is hosting a proposers’ day on July 12 to provide further details about the funding program, which goes by the moniker Knowledge Representation in Neural Systems. A solicitation will also be expected to go up shortly on federal contracting databases.

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