By the end of the four days, those who had their brain stimulated had improved their performance by about 50 to 65 percent and memorized an average of about four to six additional words from the list of 20, Reinhart said. “It’s very impressive,” said Roi Cohen Kadosh, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Surrey who was not involved in the study.
“We can track the cumulative memory improvement…with each passing day,” says Reinhart, who with his colleagues. published the findings in the journal Nature Neuroscience in Monday.
The biggest improvements were in those with the worst cognitive function at the start of the study. This suggests that the technique could one day be useful for people with memory disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease or other dementias, Reinhart said.
When Reinhart’s team swapped frequencies, targeting the front of the brain with low frequencies and the back of the brain with high frequencies, there was no improvement in short- or long-term memory. This suggests that the type of stimulus must match natural brain waves in order to function.
Reinhart and his colleagues only tested their volunteers a month after they performed the trial, and they didn’t know if the improvements would last beyond that point. And while the study found that the volunteers memorized the words from the list better, Reinhart didn’t know if their memory improved further, or if the stimulation improved their lives. them in any way or not.
“The effects are really specific and not something beneficial for people who want to improve their memory [more generally],” said Cohen Kadosh. He points out that people who want to remember things for an exam, for example, don’t just want to remember the first and last things they read — they need to remember everything. “We need to see if there is really any effect…in daily life functions,” he said. Bikson agrees that this is a valid concern — some “brain training” games promise to increase player awareness, but Research shows that players are, in fact, just playing the game better and not seeing broader benefits. However, Reinhart’s approach is different, he points out. “If you’re stimulating a brain network that’s normally involved in some aspect of perception… that gives credence to it. [idea that the benefits] generalizable,” he said.
