#Ultratron electroestimulation series

Just as a musical orchestra contains flutes, oboes, violins-so too, the gamma rhythms that reside within your brain each contribute something unique to the electricity-based orchestra that creates your memories. They reach back to faster, high-frequency rhythms called gamma rhythms, which are generated in the region of the brain that processes the world around us. Slow, low-frequency rhythms-theta rhythms-dance in the front of your brain, acting like the conductors of an orchestra. To understand why this technique is so effective, we need to take a look at the two mechanisms that allow working memory to function properly: coupling and synchronization.Ĭoupling occurs when different types of brain rhythms coordinate with one another, and it helps us process and store working memories. Even more encouraging? That memory boost lasted at least to the end of the 50-minute time window after stimulation-the point at which the experiment ended. However, when the older adults received 25 minutes of mild stimulation delivered through scalp electrodes and personalized to their individual brain circuits, the difference between the two groups vanished.

#Ultratron electroestimulation series

Photo by Cydney Scottīut the duo has discovered something incredible: by using electrical currents to noninvasively stimulate brain areas that have lost their rhythm, we can drastically improve working memory performance.ĭuring the study, which was supported by a National Institutes of Health grant, they asked a group of people in their 20s and a group in their 60s and 70s to perform a series of memory tasks that required them to view an image, and then, after a brief pause, to identify whether a second image was slightly different from the original.Īt baseline, the young adults were much more accurate at this, significantly outperforming the older group.

By the time we reach our 60s and 70s, these neural circuits have deteriorated enough that many of us experience noticeable cognitive difficulties, even in the absence of dementias like Alzheimer’s disease. Working memory starts to decline in our late 20s and early 30s, Reinhart explains, as certain areas of the brain gradually become disconnected and uncoordinated. Reinhart and Nguyen’s research targets working memory-the part of the mind where consciousness lives, the part that is active whenever we make decisions, reason, recall our grocery lists, and (hopefully) remember where we left our keys. In a groundbreaking study published April 2019 in Nature Neuroscience, Reinhart and BU doctoral researcher John Nguyen demonstrate that electrostimulation can improve the working memory of people in their 70s so that their performance on memory tasks is indistinguishable from that of 20-year-olds. Rob Reinhart, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences at Boston University, says we’ve reached a point where we not only understand this language-we can speak it and harness it to enhance the functioning of the mind. These intricate electrical rhythms form the language of the brain, a language we have only begun to understand within the last century. Each sentence lingers in your mind for a fleeting moment, the letters melding into a symphony of neural signals.

As you read the words stretched across this page, your brain is doing something magnificent.