A recent study at Oxford University shows that receiving an electric current to the brain while learning mathematics can improve numbers skills by one third. But don't go firing your math tutor and tasering yourself in the head, that would not help; it would hurt.
"Electric current to the brain" may sound painful, but shockingly, the study participants could feel nothing, according to a report.
Participants in the study agreed to have their brains stimulated with transcranial random noise simulation (TRNS), which would send a randomly fluctuating current to the participants brains as they were studying math, over a period of five consecutive days. Those people who had their brains stimulated showed mathematical improvement by learning up to five times faster that the other participants who only thought they were having their brains stimulated. When given a test six months later, they retained 30 to 40 percent of the information they learned when receiving the TRNS treatments.
Cognitive Neuroscientist Roi Cohen Kadosh of the University of Oxford conducted the study, and it's not the first time he has tried electric currents to help improve learning skills. He conducted a similar study in 2010, which resulted in the study volunteers quickly learning a new set of numbers, based on symbols. The electric current was applied to the right parietal lobe of the brain, the area in which we store our numbers skills.
This type of treatment may help with more than just math. When the TRNS was applied to the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the participants were able to memorize new "facts" quicker than the people who were not receiving the treatments.
"The study suggests a safe and cheap way we can improve people's math with limited intervention. It worked on university students, so now we need to look at whether it is effective on the wider population," says lead researcher Roi Cohen Kadosh, of Oxford University, to the U.K.'s The Daily Mail.
Although this may sound incredibly helpful before taking that statistics test you have yet to study for, TRNS is still being researched. So you better hit the books, and take this advice;
"Do not try this at home," Cohen Kadosh says. "TRNS requires more sophisticated equipment and protocols. The electrodes have to be attached in just the right place and the cognitive training has to be done right too."
