Chemical synapse cells, known as a gap junction. At gap junctions, cells approach within about 3.5 nm of each other, rather than the 20 to 40 nm distance that separates cells at chemical synapses. As opposed to chemical synapses, the postsynaptic potential in electrical synapses is not caused by the opening of ion channels by chemical transmitters, but rather by direct electrical coupling between both neurons. Electrical synapses are faster than chemical synapses. Electrical synapses are found throughout the nervous system, including in the retina, the reticular nucleus of the thalamus, the neocortex, and in the hippocampus. While chemical synapses are found
Imagined speech intent of providing a foundation for synthetic telepathy. According to DARPA, the project “will allow user-to-user communication on the battlefield without the use of vocalized speech through neural signals analysis. The brain generates word-specific signals prior to sending electrical impulses to the vocal cords. These imagined speech signals would be analyzed and translated into distinct words allowing covert person-to-person communication.” DARPA's program outline has three major goals: The process for analyzing subjects' "silent speech" is composed of recording subjects’ brain waves, and then using a computer to process the data and determine the content of the subjects' "covert speech". Subject