Richard J. Genik II, Ph.D., director of the Emergent Technology Research Division and assistant professor of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences for the Wayne State University School of Medicine, was one of 15 experts selected by the U.S. Army to make recommendations on how the service should invest its neuroscience research funding for the next two decades.
The catalyst for the study, Dr. Genik explained, was Tom Killion, Ph.D., the deputy assistant secretary for Research and Technology and the chief scientist for the U.S. Army. Dr. Killion requested an independent study to determine where the Army should invest neuroscience research dollars for the next 20 years to develop the highest impact. Dr. Killion made the request of the National Research Council, the main research arm of the National Academies of Science. That led to the selection of the nation's leading neuroscience experts to participate in the study. Five of the 15 committee members chaired subject matter groups. Dr. Genik chaired the technology group for the 20-month study.
Once the report was completed, Dr. Genik was one of four committee members selected to make up a briefing team with the committee chair. They briefed Dr. Killion at the Pentagon, the Board of Army Science and Technology at the National Research Council, and other Army organizations, including the Army Research Lab, Army Research Institute, Medical Research and Material Command, Training and Doctrine Command, and the Office of Acquisition, Logistics and Technology.
"Being recognized as a national leader in neuroscience technology and by inclusion on the committee itself is a high honor for the department, school and the university as whole; however, this second assignment of representing the committee to all external entities is even further recognition based on performance and overall contribution to the report," said Dr. Genik, who was the only member of the briefing team to present at all three official briefings.
"In general, I hope we are able to improve survivability and decrease the effects of combat on returning soldiers," Dr. Genik said of the study. "I am also hoping that we can increase training efficiency and provide guidance to those writing Army doctrine for future soldiers."
A specific example, he noted, would involve the training and evaluation of operational readiness of helicopter pilots. One of the Army's helicopters has a crash rate that "significantly exceeds" that of other aircraft, even when considering the inherent danger of missions. Reports received by the committee indicated, from a neuroscience point-of-view, that the operational interface for the helicopter pushes the cognitive limits of pilots during training, creating an increased risk of incident should the mission include additional unfamiliar stressors, or the pilot's cognitive abilities be affected by sleep deprivation or nutritional imbalance.
"The Army does a remarkable job of making sure soldiers have enough time to sleep and are provided more than adequate nutrition, but the soldier could greatly benefit from a feedback system that tells him when he's at peak performance and only at 80 percent peak or 60 percent," Dr. Genik explained. "For the bulk of assignments, far lower than peak cognitive status is sufficient, but when tasks are required for a mission that inherently taxes the limits of normal function, we hope to increase survivability by providing both the soldier and commander in the field, as well as the strategic-tactical commander, with additional information on neural status and readiness."
Some changes are already taking place in the military. The Secretary of the Army, Dr. Genik noted, has asked for a direct report because the changes under way represent a "paradigm shift" in Army research doctrine that could affect hundred of millions of dollars in funding. The various research branches of the Army are being re-tasked to work together on issues involving neuroscience. Within the next year it's possible that a military version of the Actigraph - a device that measures circadian sleep rhythms, energy expenditure and other factors contributing to stress -- may be tested with a small number of combat troops. The rationale behind this test would be to provide objective feedback to ground troops about their neural state based on physical exertion and sleep deprivation. The field deployment of other related testing technologies is likely at least five years away, he said.
The committee made special emphasis to separate what was considered "mission enabling" technologies from "research enabling" technologies.
"The Army is very adept at recognizing devices intended to be deployed, but so far has been somewhat slow to understand the importance of guiding technologies that lead to changes in the field, but are not deployed themselves," Dr. Genik said. "For example, all of the published human functional magnetic resonance imaging is done with a subject in a supine or prone position. There are significant perceptual differences between this position and sitting or standing, and whether the research conclusions derived from horizontal orientation directly apply to vertical orientation is an open research question that will require a new piece of technology to answer: a vertical bore MRI machine."
Military training and doctrine, Dr. Genik said, has a 4,000-year history. In that time, armies and their professional leaders have accumulated and absorbed practical lessons from experience and trial and error. Neuroscience has been around only about 100 years, with only the last decade or so involving significant situational observation of local mental activity.
"We discuss at length the aspects of stress, including post traumatic stress disorder, that may affect performance in the field and suggest research recommendations on personality traits that may have more resilience to specific stressors," Dr. Genik said. "Additionally, we recommend a thorough evaluation of types of stress soldiers encounter, including physical, environmental, mental, cognitive, nutritional and others. The committee suggests these areas be evaluated for what they may have in common, as well as what may be different. For example, mental stress caused by encountering a perilous situation can be very different in both intensity and duration than physical stress that can usually be alleviated with nutrition and sleep."
An executive summary of the report is available free from the National Academies Press at
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12500