14 DAY TRIAL // Applying a weak electrical current to the brain enhances a person's mathematical performance for a period of up to 6 months, without affecting other cognitive functions, reported a team of researchers from the University of Oxford.
Roi Cohen Kadosh of the Department of Experimental Psychology and Oxford Center for Functional MRI of the Brain, at the University of Oxford, and colleagues used a brain stimulation method called transcranial direct current stimulation, or TDCS.
This technique is a noninvasive one, in which a weak current is applied constantly to the brain and over time it reduces or enhances the activity of the neurons.
It is a very widely used method, that helps improving several functions in people having suffered strokes or who have neurological impairments.
For this new research, the scientists applied TDCS only to the parietal lobe, which is the part of the brain responsible for numerical understanding.
All the study volunteers had normal mathematical skills, but were asked to learn a series of artificial numbers (more like unknown symbols that they were told were numbers) while they received TDCS.
When the researchers tested them to see their ability to process the relationship between the artificial numbers and to map them correctly in space by using standard testing methods for numerical competence, they realized that the brain stimulation had improved the subjects' ability to learn the new numbers.
At follow-up the researchers realized that the improvements lasted for a period of 6 months after training.
These results are rather encouraging because 20 percent of the population suffer from moderate to severe numerical disabilities, like dyscalculia, or lost their numerical skills because of stroke or degenerative disease.
Kadosh said that he is “certainly not advising people to go around giving themselves electric shocks, but we are extremely excited by the potential of our findings.
“We've shown before that we can temporarily induce dyscalculia [with another method of brain stimulation], and now it seems we might also be able to make someone better at maths.
“Electrical stimulation will most likely not turn you into Albert Einstein, but if we're successful, it might be able to help some people to cope better with maths."
After seeing that the TDCS treatment works in people with normal mathematical abilities, the researchers want to try it on people with severe numerical disabilities.
The findings were reported online on November 4 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication.