Electroshock therapy used to boost math skills

Random jolts of electrical current can speed up math skills, researchers say.

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JUNE 2, 2013

BY: DIANA DUEL

The idea of using electrical current to alter brain activity is nothing new. In fact, numerous studies have shown that much milder electrical stimulation applied to targeted regions of the brain can dramatically accelerate learning in a wide range of tasks, from marksmanship to speech rehabilitation after stroke. However, the idea to test the method known as transcranial random noise stimulation regarding math skills had never been put into practice until 2010, when cognitive neuroscientist Roi Cohen Kadosh of the University of Oxford decided to apply mild (painless) jolts to the forehead of some 25 volunteers and found that it actually boosted their abilities by as much as 30% for up to 6 months.

During the trial, the volunteer subjects were asked to perform long arithmetic problems such as 13-5+14+11=37, etc while receiving either real or "sham" brain stimulation. Two sponge-covered electrodes, fixed to either side of the forehead with a stretchy athletic band, targeted an area of the prefrontal cortex considered key to arithmetic processing, stated study author Jacqueline Thompson Ph.D (a student in Cohen Kadosh's lab). Half the students received jolts of electrical current that was slowly ramped up to about 1 milliamp (a mere fraction of the voltage of an AA battery), then randomly fluctuated between high and low values for approximately 20 minutes per day over 5 days, while the remaining subjects only experienced initial sensation of the increase from a a small amount of current that was then shut off.

Although both groups showed similar abilities during the first day, by the end of the week those who had received the mini shocks were anywhere from 2 to 5 times faster than the others, and were able to retain that edge for up to six months later.

"While parents and students may see this as a way to get through SATs," Thompson is quick to warn readers not to try this at home, not matter how tempted they might be, cautioning that researchers still don’t fully understand how it works, or whether there could be any side effects.

Readers can learn more by checking out her report online in the journal Current Biology..