DARPA wants injured brains to rewire and repair themselves as the US military confronts traumatic brain injuries

US soldiers fire mortars during a training event at Fort Dix, New Jersey.

Weapons like this have been associated with Traumatic Brain Injuries, or TBIs.

Steven Roussel/US Army DARPA, the Pentagon's research arm, is exploring ways to help injured brains rebuild damaged connections.

SHINE would target affected neural circuits while sparing healthy ones.

The research could matter for troops and other Americans exposed to traumatic brain injuries.

Brain injuries are among the military's most pressing health problems , making advancements in treatment critical.

To that end, the Pentagon's research arm is exploring ways to help an injured brain rebuild damaged connections and heal itself.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, says it wants to develop noninvasive tools that can "enhance the brain's ability to adapt and rewire itself" after an injury, DARPA's page on the effort says.

"Though the key to the brain's remarkable adaptivity is neuroplasticity, we lack the tools to stimulate plasticity in specific functional circuits to avoid global change, and/or unwanted side effects," the agency says.

To solve those problems, DARPA has launched a new program called SHINE , which is short for "Selective Harnessing of Intrinsic Neuroplasticity Engineering." The effort is in its earliest stages, but could have important implications for people recovering from traumatic brain injuries .

The US military has faced rising rates of TBI recently, as troops fighting the war against Iran have come under drone and missile fire, explosions from which cause " blast overpressure ," a common cause of TBIs.

Beyond enemy attacks, the repeated use of certain weapons, such as artillery, mortars, and shoulder-launched rockets, by US troops can also cause traumatic brain injuries.

The military's attention to brain health has grown as researchers have learned more about the effects of repeated exposure, and as news stories have highlighted previously overlooked mild and frequent injuries, said Vik Bebarta, a former military emergency physician who now serves as the strategic lead for the Marcus Institute for Brain Health at the University of Colorado Anschutz.

While certain jobs involving proximity to explosions are historically more closely associated with TBIs, there are other, less obviously risky military and national security jobs in which personnel are vulnerable to such injuries.