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The Associated PressApril 9, 2019 16:22:56 IST
According to a new study, zapping the brains of people over 60 with a light electric current has improved a form of memory that has allowed them to function as people in their twenties or so.
One day, people may visit clinics to strengthen this capacity, which decreases both in normal aging and in dementia such as Alzheimer's disease, said researcher Robert Reinhart of Boston University.
The treatment is for the "working memory", the ability to keep information in mind for a few seconds when you perform a task, such as doing calculations in your head. Sometimes called the workbench or the notepad of the mind, it's crucial for things like taking medicine, paying bills, grocery shopping or planning, says Reinhart.
"This is where your consciousness lives … where you work on information," he said.
The new study is not the first to show that brain stimulation can boost working memory. But Reinhart, who reported work Monday in the newspaper Nature Neuroscience, says it's remarkable for showing success in older people and because memory stimulation has persisted for at least an hour after the end of brain stimulation.
Image of representation.
A scientist who previously reported increasing working memory with electrical stimulation noted that the decrease in this ability with normal aging was not huge. But "they removed the effects of the age of these people," said Dr. Barry Gordon, professor of neurology and cognitive science at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore.
"This is a great first step" toward demonstrating a way to improve mental performance, said Gordon, who was not involved in the new study.
Reinhart agreed that more research is needed before it can be formally tested as a treatment.
The electric current was administered by a fitted hood which also monitored the brain waves of each subject. For study participants, this current was felt as a slight tingling, itching, or stinging sensation under the electrodes for about 30 seconds, Reinhart said. After that, the skin was used to the current and it was imperceptible.
The researchers' idea was to improve the communication between the prefrontal cortex of the brain in the front and the temporal cortex on the left, because the rhythms of activity of these two regions were no longer synchronized.
Good memories on a clothesline.
The researchers then applied the current to these two regions to encourage the cycles of activity to return to a corresponding model. The findings provided new evidence that a break in this communication is causing loss of working memory with age, Reinhart said.
Part of the study included 42 participants aged 20 and 42 others aged 60 to 76 years. They were first tested on a measure of working memory. It was the visualization of an image such as a harmonica or a broken egg on a computer screen, then a blank screen for three seconds, then a second image identical or slightly modified. Subjects had to judge whether it was the same picture or not.
During a dummy stimulation, the older group was less accurate than the younger participants. But during and after 25 minutes of real brain stimulation, they did the same. The improvement lasted at least 50 minutes after the end of the stimulation, at which point the researchers stopped testing. Reinhart said the benefit would not have been as long, but previous research suggests it could last five hours or more after the stimulation is stopped.
The researchers achieved the same result with a second group of 28 subjects over 62 years old.
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