A new study suggests that carefully controlled electrical brain stimulation can improve mathematical capabilities, especially in people with weaker connections in a specific part of the brain.
Electrical signals imperceptible transmitted to the brain got improve student mathematical skills.
This is what a study showed this Tuesday in PLOS Biology.
Researchers recruited 72 students from Oxford University, on which mathematical abilities were analyzed before being divided into three subgroups with equivalent capacities.
Two of the groups received stimulation in the prefrontal dorsolateral (DLPFC) cortex or posterior parietal cortex (PPC)-brain areas linked to mathematical capacity in previous investigations. The third group received a simulated stimulation.
Then, as details A, the team has applied transcranial random noise stimulation (TRNS), which is just one of many types of noninvasive brain stimulation, but is known to be more comfortable than other options.
“Most people do not feel whether it is being stimulated or not,” he explained to the same magazine the leader of the investigation, ROI Cohen Kadoshneuroscientist at the University of Surrey.
Each participant in the treated groups received 150 minutes of stimulation, paired with math tests for five days of testing.
The researchers found that the DLPFC Stimulation was in fact associated with a better calculation capacitybut PPC stimulation has not improved exercise learning.
People with a weaker connectivity that were in the simulated stimulation group had more difficulty dealing with calculation problems than people with a stronger connectivity of the same group. But individuals with weak connections that had their DLPFC stimulated had the greatest improvements in their scores.
Attention to experts
A small (2019) that the team performed with a group of math teachers showed that stimulation worsened the performance of professionals in math tests. This suggests that those who already have a high mathematical capacity should avoid stimulation.
“It is a great system. If we introduce a new noise in this system, it will cause a harmful effect“Kadosh said about the brains of math teachers.”
Kadosh, co -founder of Cognite Neurotechnology, a brain stimulation company, said people in universities, workplaces and training centers could soon benefit from this technology.
In Live Science, Sung Joo KimPsychologist at the University of Binghamton, who was not involved in the investigation, warned that although similar stimulation devices have already been authorized for home use, analyzes that analyze their operation indicate that further research is required.
“When it is intended to stimulate certain regions of the brain, it may not necessarily work so well unless you really take into account the anatomical structure of each person’s brain,” Kim said, recommending that these devices are customized.
