Roy Elal

7B

due date: 3/11/10

Electric Jolt to Brain Boosts Math Skills

Ker Than

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/11/101104-electric-current-brains-math-science-health/

Published November 4, 2010

Some scientists ran some tests, and found out that a non painful electrical shock to the brain increases people’s math skills. The study leader, Roi Cohen-Kadosh (Israeli), who is a neuroscientist at Oxford, in the UK. These scientists and other scientists still don't fully understand how electrical stimulations improve these specific mental abilities, but one possibility is that the electrical shock influences brain chemicals called neurotransmitters. This experiment took about 7 months, and ended recently, meaning it took about 7 months to finish. They did this experiment to help people with dyscalculia.

This new discovery could lead to long-lasting treatments for people with moderate/severe math capabilities, or for people with dyscalculia (math dyslexia). This learning restrictions anticipates a person from understanding even the simplest math approaches, according to the leading scientist in this experiment; Roi Cohen-Kadosh. “Treating such conditions is ‘exactly our aim’” Said Cohen-Kadosh. Cohen-Kadosh and his team used a method called ‘transcranial direct current’ not to hurt or invade healthy cells, blood vessels, and/or tissues. This method’s purpose is to assign only a weak shock to the brains of 15 healthy adults who volunteered to take part in this six day learning task. The shock was assigned by using pads on the head (specifically the scalp). These adults, which had normal mathematical abilities, firstly, were trained to mentally to associate nine random symbols with numbers (random symbols with numbers meaning: ex. 78^9). “This was done to mimic the learning process that children go through as they first learn how to associleate numerical values with digits” Cohen-Kadosh claimed.

Each daily training session took place, the 15 adults each got a 20 minute long electrical shock to their parietal lobes, the part of the brain used for processing numbers. "People with dyscalculia have problems (in that brain region), such as lower brain activation or abnormal structures" Cohen-Kadosh said. After every training, the scientists making the experiment made the adults who participated take test that are shown to children to compare with their mathematical accomplishments in their future lives. One test included two of the symbols the participants learned on a screen. For example; one of the symbols was number 2, while the other was 4. Thus, the number ‘2’ symbol would be purposely bigger than the number ‘4’ symbol. After the participators had a look at the screen, the team would ask which number was physically bigger. According to Cohen-Kadosh people with normal mathematical problems would have trouble doing this, while young children and people with dyscalculia wouldn’t, that is because in a normal brain, mentally processes everything differently than young children and people with dyscalculia, so in this case, people with normal brains, have size and evaluating number interfere with each other. After the participators’ brains were shocked, their achievements in this task got worse and worse, meaning the experiment was working, and they were improving their math skills. "It's counterintuitive," Cohen-Kadosh declared “but declining performance is a sign that the number symbols have become deeply ingrained in the participants' minds—thus showing the treatment actually improved mathematical abilities.” --- 6 months after the experiment, they called all the 15 participants back and gave them the same task, surprisingly for the Cohen-Kadosh and the team the participants still did badly on the task, signifying the improvements from 6 months before were still working! "The effect had worn off only slightly, but it was not significantly lower than after the end of the last training session" said Cohen-Kadosh.

This Current events, was definitely was the most interesting I have done in the past year. I say this because I'm not trying to say the others were boring, but this was amazing, reading about an electrical shock to a person’s scalp, I only saw, or heard about things like that in cartoon movies. I also thought it was pretty cool that the leading scientist was an Israeli. What was nice about the scientists experiment was that they did it to help people with disabilities, which does happen oftenly, people trying to help others that are disabled, but never did I know people had disabilities with learning math. Daniel Ansari, another neuroscientist at the University of Western Ontario Canada, said that types of treatments like this are most likely “very, very far off” then added “This is an exciting beginning, but the experiment is limited to very basic mathematical tasks --- It doesn’t necessarily show that it improves school relevant skills such as; arithmetic” although Ansari wasn’t part of this experiment. One concern the whole group of scientists had been that if a person with a normal brain, and no disability, who stimulate, or shock their brain to boost their math skills is an ‘unfair’ advantage. "Should we prevent this?" Cohen-Kadosh questioned. "It's a dilemma, and an ethical question." In my opinion this is an unfair advantage, unless everyone; all students in the schools, get this stimulation, then it would only be fair, but I highly doubt that would happen. I think for my next article I will read about the same thing, just with writing songs/playing music improves English (language) skills.

Bibliography

http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRWTKSxQQPORUslgsqE-AuN9z51BuhAk4qJS3vkvvMdY0_e90E&t=1&usg=__AK6eG4HzrDkuipkremEzX8fuX7w

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/11/101104-electric-current-brains-math-science-health/