Stimulating Your Brain With Electricity Can Boost Visual Memory [Brains]

Struggling to bear in mind faces? Forgetting how your favorite Backstreet Boys member looks? Help can be on its way inside the type of the first non-invasive way of stimulating the brain that could boost visual memory: Scull electrodes.

The technique uses transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), wherein weak electrical currents are applied to the scalp using electrodes. The tactic can temporarily increase or decrease activity in a selected brain region and has already been shown to boost verbal and motor skills in volunteers.

Richard Chi, a PhD student at the Centre for the Mind, University of Sydney, and co-workers wanted to follow up on previous research showing that lesions within the left anterior temporal lobe (ATL), a neighborhood near the temple, can result in improvements in visual memory and perceptual skills kind of like the talents exhibited by some people with autism. Chi’s team wondered if inhibiting that area using tDCS might likewise improve memory.

To investigate, his team showed 36 volunteers a dozen ” study” slides covered with shapes that varied within their number, arrangement, colour and size (see ” Brain games” ). The volunteers were then shown five ” test” slides – two with patterns that appeared in the study slides, two with completely new patterns and one whose pattern looked equivalent to that on a study slide. Participants were asked to identify which of the test slides they’d already seen, first performing the task without any brain stimulation.

Subjects then repeated the experiment 12 times, with one group receiving so-called anodal tDCS (which reinforces activity) on their right ATL and cathodal tDCS (which inhibits activity) on their left. A second group received the other stimulation and a third group received a placebo treatment, which didn’t stimulate both sides of the brain.

Those within the first group more than doubled their scores after receiving tDCS, experiencing a 110 per cent improvement in visual memory. Participants inside the second and third groups showed no overall improvement in performance (Brain Research, DOI: 10.1016/j.brainres.2010.07.062).

The left ATL is understood to be crucial for context processing, among other things, while an appropriate ATL is associated with visual memory. Chi’s team suggests that inhibiting activity inside the left ATL cuts errors in visual memory by reducing the possibly confusing influence that context may have on recognition. This effect, combined with an increase in activity within the right ATL, allows someone to be more accustomed to the literal details of each pattern. Further studies during which the temporal lobes are stimulated individually might help to tell apart the underlying mechanisms involved.

A previous experiment using an identical visual task, but without tDCS, showed that folk with autism outperformed non-autistic individuals by roughly an analogous margin as the development seen in this experiment, says Chi.

In future, Chi says, it could eventually be possible to take advantage of tDCS to ” develop a ‘thinking cap’ that reinforces learning” .

New Scientist reports, explores and interprets the consequences of human endeavour set inside the context of society and culture, providing comprehensive coverage of science and technology news.

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This post is tagged: boost, brains, electricity, Stimulating, visual