BIOETHICS

Neuroscience Goes to War

Brain Scans Can Build a Better Army

A familiar concept in military training is that of leveling individual differences so that, at least in terms of some minimal set of skills and preparedness, each service member is capable of replacing another. But the National Research Council has released a report, Opportunities in Neuroscience for Future Army Applications, that suggests tailoring individual soldiers’ training to recent discoveries about the brain from modern neuroscience can provide valuable advances in military instruction. Along with traditional areas of concern to the military like leadership and decision making under stress, the report suggests that the services should also take cognitive fitness, brain-machine interfaces, and biomarkers (biological indicators of brain states) into consideration during basic training.

Soldiers tend to embrace virtually any arrangement that might make them more likely to be of help to their comrades in arms.

The equivalence concept-that training should produce soldiers with similar skill sets-provides commanders with flexibility in replacing one soldier with another as casualties and other exigencies of combat require. It is embodied in the “uniform” assigned to each new recruit, and illustrated in such films as Band of Brothers, in which soldiers come and go as barely distinguishable names and faces. Of course, as soon as basic training is over, distinctions are drawn over such matters as special training, assignments and, eventually rank. But the essential idea that the basic warfighter should be functionally similar to another remains salient in military theory.

But with more attention to the empirical applications of modern neuroscience, we can better understand the connections between predictors of success and individual variability in training and learning. As a result, equivalence may not be the key to preparing the modern soldier.

Although commanders have always intuitively recognized individual differences (as in the case of President Abraham Lincoln, who sought a general who would execute his war strategy), the application of 20th century psychological concepts like IQ and personality types formalized the idea that uniqueness could be exploited as well as screened out. Work assignments and military career paths could be guided by valid distinctions in capacity and potential. In the selection of certain individuals for high risk/high gain tasks, as in the case of special operations personnel, it is surely desirable to have as much psychological data as possible.

Yet with data comes the potential for bias, and genetic discrimination is a concept familiar in the civilian world. While he was a U.S. Senator, President Obama co-sponsored a bill that prohibits discrimination based on the results of DNA tests. But the use of such testing for positive purposes like employment opportunities might not be considered discriminatory, and in any case national security needs could trump conditions thought to be unacceptable in the civilian world. Those who take up arms in defense of a nation, whether volunteers or conscripts, are commonly understood to have ceded their liberties, and implicitly accept risks that are not necessarily shouldered by other citizens.

In the real world these extraordinary burdens of duty are not usually resented. Soldiers tend to embrace virtually any arrangement that might make them more likely to be of help to their comrades in arms. Imagine for example that there was an advance in understanding of brain chemistry that helped predict susceptibility to post-traumatic stress. Combat soldiers might well welcome such a screen if it meant avoiding operational failures that could result in harm to others in their unit, even if their own career opportunities were impaired as a result.

Already there are biomarkers for the ability to manage stress and neurological measures of post-traumatic stress. Indeed, many in and out of the military have called on the services to mandate a pre-deployment mental screening in order to establish a baseline of brain functioning on which to measure future changes. This information could also help screen candidates for certain jobs and missions and be incorporated into debriefing and post-operations examinations. Neural indicators of different learning and decision making styles could help in designing training regimens and duty assignments. Growing understanding of the neural basis of performance under conditions like sleep and nutrition deprivation and stress could identify interventions to ameliorate performance degradation, like pharmaceuticals for cognitive enhancement and improved delivery of nutrients to the brain. The new report advises the Army to monitor nonmilitary research on neuroscience elsewhere in government as well as in academia and industry.

In 2008 there was a complementary report on the potential for neuroscience to make greater contributions-and create novel challenges-for national security. Entitled “Emerging Cognitive Neuroscience and Related Technologies,” the committee (of which I was a member) urged close collaboration between the scientific and intelligence communities to keep track of rapid advances in neuroscience and neurotechnology. Organizers asked the committee to assess the current state of work for trends worth trackeding, to assess the rate of innovation, and to pay special attention to selected countries. The committee’s key finding addressed the need for intelligence collection and analysis to emphasize science and technology, to obtain intelligence professionals with advanced scientific training, and to increase collaboration with the academic community. Its key recommendation was that the intelligence community use a more centralized indication and warning system concerning non-U.S. neuroscience potential. This new report broadens the conversation to include the uniformed military as well as the intelligence community.

Although the applications of neuroscience can easily be hyped, the implications are so great that we should expect the national security establishment to follow these developments with great interest in the years ahead.

Jonathan D. Moreno, Ph.D., is the David and Lyn Silfen University Professor of Ethics and Professor of Medical Ethics and of the History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Editor-in-Chief of Science Progress.

Tags: bioethics, Neuroscience

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