Study Explores Electrical Stimulation as an Aid to Memory

Dongmeng 1st Posting

Health

"Study Explores Electrical Stimulation as an Aid to Memory " by Benedict Carey

The New York Times, February 8, 2012

805 words/3 pages

Scientists find a way to improve human's memory by using electrical stimulation to a key area in brain as it learns its way around a new environment. After applying it to epilepsy patients who being prepared for surgery, it allowed people to navigate a new city without a GPS after a virtual driving game that tests partial memory. Experts said the new study, appearing Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine, can not be concluded yet because of the small amount of patients tested. However, it comes at a growing excitement about study of memory and its disorders; only last week, researchers reported Alzheimer's disease cause a large damage through brain started in the same area. As a neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania, Micheal J. Kahana showed his strong support in this kind of study. During the experiment, patients worked to master a taxi-driver game, in which the goal is quickly drop off passengers at 6 various locations in an unfamiliar city, and 3 of the trips an electrode ran in a low current which is enough to stimulate neurons in the area but not enough to interfere with function or trip off the patients. The results show the patients did far better in returning to the "stimulate" destinations than the other tree, and the improvement ranged from 40% to 90%.

This article talked about the way to improve human’s memory. In the passed, there were similar studies before with rodents and human, as a side-effect of stimulation for another purpose with stimulating a brain region called hippocampus. In the new study, researchers focused on a neighboring area called the entorhinal cortex. Scientists use electrical stimulation to the key area in brain and tested six epilepsy patients with a taxi-diver game. The result was surprised that the improvement was large.