Wear it for 20 minutes and you get 5-hour benefits

Feb 11, 2015 07:41 GMT  ·  By

One of the figures of speech often used when going to school or preparing to learn a subject is just about to become a lot more literal, due to a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience by psychologists from the University of Vanderbilt.

Ph.D. Candidate Robert Reinhart and assistant professor of psychology Geoffrey Woodman have revealed an electric thinking cap that does exactly what it says on the tin, so to speak.

Usually, when parents or teachers tell students to put their thinking caps on, they mean they should hunker down and pay attention to what they're being shown, or to focus on whatever text is in front of them.

The Vanderbilt psychologists, however, went for a much more literal approach, creating a cap that boosts brain functions via electric impulses.

How we learn from our mistakes

Studies performed on the human brain in the past have revealed that negative voltage spikes occur in the medial-frontal cortex milliseconds before we make a mistake. The medial-frontal cortex being the part of the brain at the very top of our head.

Reinhart and Woodman figured that meant that part of the brain can influence learning and decision making, since it lets us avoid making the same mistakes later.

The two decided to test whether or not it was possible to control the brain’s electrophysiological response to mistakes.

In addition to that, they tried to see if the response could be improved or decreased based on the direction of an electrical current applied to it.

The electric thinking cap

The cap is a combination of an elastic headband and a bunch of electrodes. Two electrodes (conducted by saline-soaked sponges) are applied to the cheek and the crown of the head.

Through them, transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) was applied for 20 minutes. About the same as a 9-volt battery really.

After that is done, an EEG cap was placed on the head to capture readings of the brain while the subjects executed certain learning tasks.

The results were promising. Over five dozen people were tested, and 75% of them exhibited a marked improvement in learning and decision making. Made better by how 20 minutes of stimulation allows for 5 hours of higher learning capabilities.

Practical applications

Besides better learning, this approach could be used to treat certain neurological diseases. Unfortunately, it will be some time before widespread use, since the developers need to make sure no long-term side effects emerge.