Electric Currents Boost Brain Power

dafiza

Pernah tgk kat Discovery Chanel ttg topik ni. Diaorg buat experiment ttg electric current can boost brain power. Very interesting.

Siapa yg rasa otak lembap, otak dah tepu ker, ataupun nak exam , bolehlah cas dulu otak tu dgn elektrik dulu.

By Jim Giles
Nature Publishing Group

Connecting a battery across the front of the head can boost verbal skills, says a team from the US National Institutes of Health.

A current of two thousandths of an ampere (a fraction of that needed to power a digital watch) applied for 20 minutes is enough to produce a significant improvement, according to data presented this week at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, held in San Diego. And apart from an itchy sensation around the scalp electrode, subjects in the trials reported no side-effects.

Meenakshi Iyer of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Maryland, ran the current through 103 initially nervous volunteers. "I had to explain it in detail to the first one or two subjects," she says. But once she had convinced them that the current was harmless, Iyer says, recruitment was not a problem.

The volunteers were asked to name as many words as possible beginning with a particular letter. Given around 90 seconds, most people get around 20 words. But when Iyer administered the current, her volunteers were able to name around 20% more words than controls, who had the electrodes attached but no current delivered. A smaller current of one thousandth of an amp had no effect.

Iyer says more work needs to be done to explain the effect, but she speculates that the current changes the electrical properties of brain cells in the prefrontal cortex, the brain region through which it passes. She believes that the cells fire off signals more easily after the current has gone by. That would make the brain area, a region involved in word generation, generally more active, she suggests.

Iyer's group, which is led by Eric Wassermann, was prompted to run the tests after considering problems facing researchers who were studying the effect of magnetic fields on the brain. Some neuroscientists hope that magnetic fields could have a therapeutic effect, perhaps by boosting activity in areas of the brain that have suffered cell loss owing to dementia. But magnetic fields can cause seizures and also require bulky equipment to generate them.

Iyer hopes that low electric currents will offer a safer and more portable alternative. After running further safety tests, she plans to test the effect of the current on patients with frontal temporal dementia, a brain disease that causes speech problems. "This won't be a cure," Iyer cautions. "But it could be used in addition to drugs."

The idea of using electrical current to boost brain activity dates back to experiments on animals in the 1950s. The early work showed some potential, but fell from favour because of a perceived link to electroconvulsive therapy, a controversiol technique in which patients with depression are treated by having short but intense pulses of electricity applied to the brain.

Source: Nature Publishing

contessa

eerrrkkk...mau kojolll terus nanya....

dafiza

Diaorg guna lower punyer electric current. Memang sapa yg diujikaji tu guna electric tu, IQ diarg meningkat. No-effect, harmless dan very fast result.

nanas69

eheh bukan nk kata ape r tp mak saya ckp dulu saya masa kecik2 suka main plug/suis letrik on off on off...slalu kena shot jugak sikit hahaha

patut la otak geliga (perasan)...tp skang cam dah kureng sikit...dah abis bateri kot nk kena charge balik nih