Making Numbers Add Up

Math is one of those subjects that people either love or hate. For those people who struggle with math, what if a little electrical jolt (pardon the imagery link with “Frankenstein” in the lab) to the brain could improve your skills?

A new study at the University of Oxford found that applying electrical currents to certain parts of the brain improved a person’s mathematical performance for up to six months.

“We are very excited to see these results”, says Dr. Roi Cohen Kadosh of the University of Oxford and lead author of the study. “We actually aimed to get to this stage in a few years, but we got there sooner than expected.”

Researchers used a technique known as trans-cranial direct current stimulation. This is a non-invasive technique where weak electrical current is applied to the parietal lobe, an area of the brain responsible for numerical understanding, spatial perception, and navigation.

Because the study is relatively small and still in the early stages, some doctors are skeptical over whether practical applications will ever result from the findings. That aside, the results are exciting in the realm of brain research.

Until now, there had not been a treatment targeting numerical ability without having significant side effects to other areas of the brain, such as impaired attention or focus.

“I am certainly not advising people to go around giving themselves electrical shocks, but we are extremely excited about the potential of our findings,’’ Cohen Kadosh says.

“Electrical stimulation will most likely not turn you into Albert Einstein, but if we’re successful, it might be able to help some people to better cope with math.”

Math Skills Matched

Fifteen healthy adults with normal mathematical abilities were involved in the study. Each participant had to learn a series of fake symbols that represented numbers while receiving the noninvasive brain stimulation.

The results, published in the journal Current Biology, showed that the brain stimulation to the parietal lobe improved the participants’ ability to learn the new numbers compared to those who were not stimulated or those who were stimulated in other areas of the brain. The improvements lasted six months after the week-long exercise.

Targeting Learning Disabilities

Cohen Kadosh says the stimulation could help a variety of people with disabilities that stem from the parietal lobe.

About 15 to 20 percent of the population has moderate to severe numerical disabilities, and many other people lose their number processing skills as a result of stoke, dementia or other neurodegenerative diseases.

Dyscalculia is a disability in which people have specific difficulty in learning mathematics. It is associated with dyslexia since many people easily confuse math symbols and numbers.

Dr. Stefani Hines is a developmental and behavioral pediatrician at Beaumont Hospital’s Center for Human Development in Oakland County, Mich. She often sees children with learning disabilities such as dyscalculia.

“I’m working in the trenches and I’ve never heard of this as a treatment for math disabilities,” Hines says. “This might hold some promises at some point in the future if we can figure out what population it will serve and we make sure there are no risky side effects.”

Degenerative Disease Treatment

Brain stimulation also has gained attention as an experimental treatment for degenerative diseases and stroke. Numerous clinical trials have been set up in recent years for patients who suffer from such illnesses.

“There is a lot of work ongoing to find optimal ways to do this stimulation,” said Dr. Bruce Dobkin, professor of Neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

“But there are still a lot of questions, like where exactly to stimulate, what are the parameters, the best frequency, force and amplitude, and how often this treatment should take place.”

Real Life Possibilities

Simply put, Dobkin says everything in the brain is like electrical activity and electrical stimulation bumps up that activity between the neurons.

“The flexibility and adaptability in the brain is pretty miraculous,” Dobkin says. “It’s nothing at all magical, but the real question is: Will this tool be powerful enough for general use, especially in rehab or to enhance learning in developmental disorders?”

Some Healthy Skepticism

With all such groundbreaking discoveries comes doubt or skepticism.

Dr. David Lowenstein, professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Miami School of Medicine, agrees that much more research is required before brain stimulation is used in real life.

Lowenstein says further trials require appropriate control groups to make sure that any observed effects of the stimulation are actual changes and not the placebo effect.

From Our View

WMB believes these studies have merit, but they are in their early stages and further study is needed before wider applications can be considered. Further, larger sampling with more diversity in demographics also is likely required before objective analyses can be applied to these studies.

Unlike other areas of the body, most notably the heart, the brain and its complex functions remain an uncharted frontier with many mysteries which defy easy study or explanation.

Still, it’s exciting to see researchers push the boundaries of our knowledge in an effort to improve the quality of life for those with disabilities while gaining greater understanding of what controls the mind.

This post is by TechMan, WMB co-author who blogs about issues, trends and ideas affecting business, industry, technology and consumers. If you like this post, please share it.