Traumatic stress has caused a host of devastating effects for many military service members, including mental illness, substance abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder, family violence, and suicide. Since Sept. 11, 2001, more than 30,000 active duty members and veterans have taken their own lives — a tragic toll that represents four times the number of those killed in post-911 military operations.1 Developing effective approaches to prevent suicide is a top priority within the Department of Defense.

DARPA’s STRENGTHEN program, short for Strengthening Resilient Emotions and Nimble Cognition Through Engineering Neuroplasticity, aims to build on recent advances in neuroscience and clinical practice to increase well-being and prevent or mitigate the effects of traumatic stress leading to behavioral health disorders and suicidality. The program endeavors to accomplish this through enhancing cognitive flexibility (CF) and emotional regulation (ER), key behavioral health mechanisms that act as protective buffers against traumatic stress. CF refers to the mental ability to switch between thinking about two different concepts according to the context of a situation. ER is a conscious or nonconscious strategy to start, stop, or otherwise modulate the trajectory of an emotion.

STRENGTHEN will strive to enhance the mental protective mechanisms of CF and ER through two goals: (1) Development of individualized brain network models of CF and ER and (2) design of multimodal, multidimensional interventions to induce neuroplastic change in the functional connectivity and/or structure of CF and ER brain networks to optimize an individual’s CF and ER.