Zapping the brain with electricity shown to boost older people’s short- and long-term memory

statnews ^ | Aug. 22, 2022 | Megan Molteni

[BenLurkin]

Sending weak electrical current into the brain for 20 minutes a day for four days in a row reversed declines in working and long-term memory that come with aging, scientists reported Monday in Nature Neuroscience. The researchers found that the effects lingered even after the electricity was turned off. When they tested subjects a month later, many of the improvements from the brief sessions of brain stimulation remained.

The findings provide some of the strongest support yet for a method called transcranial alternating current stimulation, or tACS, as a potential means for boosting mental functions essential to navigating the world and understanding one’s own place in it — functions that tend to deteriorate the older people get.

Unlike more invasive forms of brain stimulation that require brain surgery to install chips and implants, tACS involves little more than wearing a modified swimming cap studded with dozens of electrodes. The technology emerged from research into how neuronal networks strung widely throughout the brain coordinate to form, store, and retrieve memories through rhythmic oscillations in neuronal firing known as brain waves. Different parts of the brain pulse and thrum at different frequencies. And over the last two decades, neuroscientists across many labs have found evidence that synchronizing these vibrations across brain regions, similar to how the wind, brass, and string sections of an orchestra tune up before a performance, is a critical component of transferring information from one part to another — the building block of memory.

[Songcraft]

"If I urinate on an electric fence, will it help with my prostate area?"

No, but after that twinkle tinkle, you will then be able to compete in women's sports.

(For your prostate issues, Flu-man Fauci suggests you acquire and use one of these Chinese prostate tools.)

[dfwgator]

[hecticskeptic]

Sending weak electrical current into the brain for 20 minutes a day for four days in a row reversed declines...
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And that is why you use the more pleasurable method instead of letting it get rusty and losing it. That stimulus is like a like recharge to keep the mind in top top condition....