You drive to the supermarket as if in a dream, guiding your car without really thinking about it, piloting from memory. Details like the path to the market’s address that can be recalled as facts and knowledge, which are associated with times, places, and events are called “declarative memories.” They are often unavailable to people who have suffered traumatic brain injuries.

It is those kinds of memories–and the brain functions that enable them–that the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is now exploring through its newly launched Restoring Active Memory (RAM) program. To do so, the agency will develop an implantable, wireless neural interface device that aims to bridge the gaps that interfere with a person’s memory functions and effectively restore their abilities. If it’s successful, this would lead to a potentially game-changing neural prosthesis in the form of a brain chip. Such a procedure has already brought positive results in lab rats. The research into how well it might work for humans is expected to take four years.

“We are going to start with very simple and high-impact areas of memory function,” said Dr. Justin Sanchez, RAM’s program manager, “and get that established first.”

Understanding the fundamental neural circuits involved in memory formation is the first step according to Sanchez. Next, the program aims to develop new computational models that’ll allow medical officers to interface with those circuits, to sense and interpret the signals between them.

“Once we have developed the next generation’s devices to interface with the brain, we need to think about encoding,” explained Sanchez. “This is the process by which we send neural signals back to those neural circuits to restore that function.”

There are few, if any, effective existing therapies for those afflicted with memory deficits due to traumatic brain injuries, a problem that’s affected around 270,000 military personnel since 2000 and impacts an estimated 1.7 million U.S. civilians each year. Bridging the gaps in an injured person’s brain is no easy matter, but it’s conceptually feasible, says Sanchez, if you think of it as a disconnect in a circuit.

“Let’s say we record on one side of the circuit and understand the neural signaling that the brain was trying to send to the other side of the gap,” said Sanchez. “We can interpret that information and use it to help send signals to the other side of the gap, so that we can continue to flow that information in the brain and continue the possibility of formation of those memories.”