Electrical brain boost can make you better at maths
Stimulating the brain with rapid pulses of electricity can improve your ability to perform mental arithmetic for up to six months, a new study has shown.
Scientists have shown they can improve people’s ability to perform mental arithmetic for up to six months by giving them a short course of harmless electrical stimulation on their scalps. Photo: ALAMY
By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent 9:06PM BST 16 May 2013
For anyone who struggles with dividing the bill at the end of a meal, there is now a way to give your brain a boost.
Scientists have shown they can improve people’s ability to perform mental arithmetic for up to six months by giving them a short course of harmless electrical stimulation on their scalps.
Volunteers who received rapid pulses of electrical current – equivalent to that from an AA battery – for just 20 minutes a day for five days saw their ability to solve calculations improve by 28 per cent.
The enhancement, which made them faster at carrying out sums and other mathematical tasks, lasted for up to six months after receiving the electrical treatment.
The researchers, who are based at the University of Oxford, believe stimulating the brain in this way could be used to help people who struggle with performing mental arithmetic.
Around a fifth of the population are thought to struggle with mental arithmetic while one in 20 suffer from dyscalculia – a learning disability involving numbers that is similar to dyslexia.
Dr Roi Cohen Kadosh, a cognitive neuroscientist who led the study, said he hoped to develop devices that could be used to help students in classrooms and elderly people. He said: “The amount of electricity we are applying is very small and totally painless. Most people asked us if the device was even working because they couldn’t feel it.
“The current appears to enhance the neurons ability to process information by making them more efficient. “We hope that these techniques will one day be used in the clinic, classrooms and even at home to help those who struggle with certain cognitive tasks. “We are looking at using stimulation with educational games to help a child who is falling behind in class or to help elderly patients.”
Dr Cohen Kadosh and his team, whose work is published in the journal of Current Biology, asked 25 students to carry out calculations and learn mathematical facts – such as a times table – for 20 minutes each day.
Just over half of the students were given the electrical current – known as transcranial random noise stimulation – as they performed the tasks, while the others were not. Those that were treated with the electricity, which was applied by attaching two electrodes to their scalp, improved in their ability to perform mental arithmetic after a five days.
They were found to be up to 28 per cent better when asked to carry out calculations compared to those who had not received any electrical current. When they were tested again six months later, the improvements were found to still be there.
Using infrared imaging the scientists also found the brains of those who had received the doses of electricity used less oxygen and nutrients than those who had not. Dr Cohen Kadosh said the best results were achieved by applying random and rapid pulses of electricity that created a kind of “noise” in the brain.
The electrical stimulation works by increasing the activity of neurons in the brain, helping to train them much like a muscle can be trained to become stronger and tire less easily. Over time this helps to improve the efficiency of the neurons so they too can perform tasks more easily.
Dr Cohen Kadosh warned, however, that people should not attempt to apply electrical stimulation themselves as they could do more harm than good. He added: “Our data shows that we may be effecting molecular aspects of the neurons which may explain why there is this long lasting affect.”
