The UFC & Military Neurotechnologies

Via DARPA, the military funded and brought us the internet (it was originally called DARPAnet). The same can be said for the bulk of our favorite, now common, technologies including the widespread availability of high resolution video (think Google Earth), vehicle intelligence (Lexus' advanced parking guidance system), radar, and global positioning systems (GPS). It is an official aim of the research branch of the Department of Defense to fund and fuel crossover technologies -- technologies that are dual use in nature -- they can enhance the military as well as bootstrap society writ large. I'm talking about dual use brain-based drugs, diagnostics, and devices.

I have a close friend who fights in the UFC, so I'm going to take that field as an example. As a high intensity contact sport, the UFC (and other avenues for hand to hand combat and Mixed Martial Arts) is especially compatible with technologies designed for warfighters. Each of the four domains (Training Effectiveness, Optimizing Decision Making, Sustaining Soldier Performance, and Improving Cognitive and Behavioral Performance) from the book Opportunities in Neuroscience for Future Army Applications easily applies to the man in the ring.

• Training Effectiveness: evaluating the efficiency of training regimes; gauging individual capability and response to training; monitoring and predicting changes in individual performance efficiency; fighter selection and assessment; augmented reality based training regimes
  
• Optimizing Decision Making: emotional reactivity; recognition-primed decisions; reinforcing and accelerating combat learning using physiological and neural feedback; optimizing target discrimination (i.e. identifying and capitalizing on weaknesses in the environment)
  
• Sustaining Soldier Performance: measures to counter performance degradation (i.e. fatigue); pharmaceutical countermeasures to neurophysiological stressors (anxiety, depression, brain injury)
  
• Improving Cognitive and Behavioral Performance: field-deployable biomarkers of neural state; guarding against 'hours of boredom and moments of terror' (keeping it cool at all times)

These are domains that all athletes have a stake in, especially those athletes that need to militate against the side effects of intense exertion; those that need the fastest reaction times possible; those that can't take breaks and have to be in peak performance mode 24/7; those that have to be able to identify and exploit weaknesses, etc. Athletic trainers can use this stuff to bootstrap their own businesses and recruiters can use assessment methodologies to detect, assess, and measure potential in terms of raw talent (possession of the right neural networks) and learning ability (plasticity).

What if you were wired such that when you started to get tired, the neuronano bot in your brain turned 'on' the dopamine switch and gave you a personalized burst of newfound energy? These type of 'on/off' dimming switch neuropharmaceuticals are state of the art, soon state of the shelf. What if you could supplement standard (body) sparring with virtual sparring with neural feedback, which would allow you to identify the zone and train your brain to respond faster to threats? These are real technologies with real crossover potential. My assessment: sports in 2020 are a whole other animal.

Are there ethical, legal, and social issues associated with the use of such? Sure! Ethically, do athletes have a duty to do all they can do to be peak performers (ethically this is a deontological argument)? Does the cost of such technologies (cost in terms of adverse side effects) outweigh the prospective benefits? Increasingly, the answer to the former is yes and the latter is no. Legally, what will the 'laws' in sports performance have to say about the use of such technologies? Is it considered 'doping' to install a dimming switch neuropharmaceutical neuronanobot in the old noggin? Is it considered legal to accelerate learning capability using mind-machine interfaces? Can recruiters and team owners utilize neurophysiological diagnostics to measure and monitor performance -- to reward the excellent and dismiss the unfit on neural grounds? And what are the social repercussions in terms of the blow-back effect of neurotechnologies on kids, fans, and those who generally imitate sports stars?

The cat is out of the bag, for sure. There's no stopping emergence or social blow-back. The adventure is in exactly how sports and society reacts to Pandora's Box, and the opportunity is there for those 'first adopters' (athletes, trainers, recruiters, agents, and legal eagles) who notice the cutting edge and capitalize on it before the rest respond.