Scientists zapped students’ brains with electricity to improve their math learning

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Imperceptible electrical signals provided to the brain can improve student mathematics skills, has revealed a new study.

Researchers say that technology is not far from ready for home use – although an expert has stressed that more research is necessary.

In the new study, researchers recruited 72 students from the University of Oxford. Researchers evaluated volunteers mathematics PROWESS with tests before dividing the students into three sub-groups with paved capacities, which means that each group had a mixture of people with lower and stronger mathematical skills.

For experience, individuals in each group had electrodes placed on their spoons which could provide light electrical signals to the brain. Two of the groups received stimulation at the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) or the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) – Brain areas related to mathematical capacity in Previous research. The third group received a fake stimulation.

The team then applied the transcranial stimulation of random noise (TRN), which is only one of the many types of non -invasive cerebral stimulation but is known to be more comfortable than other options. The current has crossed the scalp is very low.

“Most people do not feel if they are stimulated or not,” said the main author King Cohen KadoshNeuroscientist at the University of Surrey. Each participant in the treated groups received 150 minutes of stimulation, associated with mathematical tests, over five days of testing.

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The tests evaluated students’ calculation skills and “learning drilling”. Learning calculation requires existing mathematical capacity and puts participants in the challenge of developing the response to a problem presented. Learning drilling, on the other hand, requires no mathematical capacity and rather requires users to memorize a series of equations presented.

Based on previous research, the authors have hypothesized that stimulation of the DLPFC would improve the learning of calculation, because this area is associated with learning new skills and high -level cognition. They thought that stimulation of the PPC, which manages the recovery of skills already learned, could improve the learning of forests. In the study, they found that stimulation of the DLPFC was indeed linked to an improvement in calculation capacity, but stimulation of the PPC has not improved the learning of drilling.

Before the start of the tests, the team had measured the connectivity of the frontal and parietal lobes of their participants, found at the front and at the top of the brain. These two lobes are the sites of the DLPFC and the PPC, respectively, and are activated together during learning in mathematics. The team has hypothesized that having stronger links between the two lobes would be linked to a stronger calculation learning. This was confirmed by the data: initially, the team observed a stronger connection among the participants with better calculation capacities.

People with lower connectivity that were in the simulated stimulation group had more difficulty adapting to calculation problems than those who have stronger connectivity in the same group. But individuals with weak connections that have stimulated their DLPFC showed the greatest improvements in their scores.

Notably, A small previous study The team has undertaken with a cohort of mathematics teachers has shown that stimulation has actually aggravated the performance of pros on mathematics tests. This suggests that those who already have a high mathematical capacity should avoid stimulation.

“It’s an optimal system,” Kadosh said about the brain of mathematics teachers. “You enter new noise in this, it will cause a harmful effect.”

Kadosh is the co-founder of Cognite Neurotechnology, a brain stimulation company, and is optimistic about the deployment of technology to the general public. Kadosh said that residents of universities, workplaces and training centers could all benefit from it. He added that he wanted to extend technology to people with learning difficulties and neurodevelopmental disorders such as attention / hyperactivity deficit disorder (ADHD).

In the meantime, Sung Joo KimA psychologist at the University of Binghamton who has not been involved in research, noted that if similar stimulation devices have already been deleted for home use, analyzes examining their operation have clearly indicated that additional research is necessary.

Kim added that these devices may have to be personalized to individual users to reflect Differences in their brain forms. “When you aim to stimulate certain regions of the brain, it would not necessarily work so well unless you really consider the anatomical structure of the brain of individual people,” she said.

Kadosh has also said that all consumption devices from research must be anchored in solid evidence, and it has argued that many brain stimulation of existing consumers have little scientific basis. “We have to show that we can use this technology at home,” he said.