Brain implant boosts memory

Electrical shocks that simulate the patterns seen in the brain when you are learning have enhanced human  memory for the first time, boosting performance on tests by up to 30 per cent. A similar approach may  work for enhancing other brain skills,  such as vision or movement,  says the team behind the work.

“We are writing the neural code to enhance memory function,” says Dong Song of the University of Southern California,who presented the findings at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in  Washington DC this week. “This has never been done before.”


The device mimics the brain
signals associated with learning
and  memory, stimulating similar
patterns of brain activity in the
hippocampus via electrodes. Song
and his team implanted their
device in 20 volunteers who were
already having electrodes placed
in their brains to treat epilepsy.

First, the team used the device
to collect data on patterns of
activity in the brainwhen the
volunteerswere doing a
memorytest. It involved trying to
rememberwhich unusual, blobby
shapes they had been shown5 to
10 seconds before. This test
measures short-termmemory,
and people normally score around
80 per cent on this task.

Rerouting memory

The volunteers also did a more
difficult version of the test, in
which they had to remember
images they had seen between
10 and 40 minutes before.
This measures working
memory – the things we keep
at the front of our minds while
making decisions, for example.

The team used the data to work
out the patterns of brain activity
associated with each person’s
best memory performances.
The group then made the device
electrically stimulate similar
brain activity in the volunteers
while they did more tests.

A third of the time, the device
stimulated the participants’
brains in a way the team thought
would be helpful. Another third
of the time, it stimulated the
brain with random patterns of
electricity. For the remaining
third of the time, it didn’t
stimulate the brain at all.

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Can Fidgeting Really Help Concentration?

I wonder whether you will stay completely still until you reach the end of this article. If you do, then perhaps I have done a good job – fidgeting, as you might expect, is a pretty reliable indicator of waning attention.

But is there more to it? For those incessant pen-clickers, hair-twirlers and foot-tappers among us, the urge to fidget is irresistible. The popularity of the fidget spinner is a case in point: earlier this year, variants of it made up every one of the top 10bestselling toys on Amazon.Many of these gadgets come with claims they can help children with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), anxiety or autism. Some people say fidgeting aids focus, or could even boost efforts to lose weight. So shouldwe all  harness the powers of restlessness?

Our interest in the subject has a long history. In 1885, the polymath Francis Galton – a cousin of Darwin – found himself in such a tedious meeting that he measured the amount of fidgeting in the audience, publishing his findings in Nature. Freud ascribed deeper meaning to fidgeting, interpreting it as a manifestation of sexual problems. And then in the 1950s,when “hyperkinetic disorder”– later ADHD – came to prominence, fidgeting began to be seen as a pathological symptom.

Underlying the claim that fidget spinners can help boost attention in those with ADHD, especially children, is the idea that the disorder is associated with chronic under-arousal at a neural level. This hampers mental performance, but the thinking is that movement can compensate by stimulating the neurotransmitters associated with arousal.“When I watched [children with ADHD]working, I could see that they were concentrating, or at least attempting to concentrate, but also that their legs might be  moving back and forth,”says Julie Schweitzer of the MIND Institute at the University of California, Davis.“They might be tapping their fingers, humming to themselves or some how producing some other movements. I thought that these might be serving a purpose.”

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