MATH BY ELECTROSHOCK

SAT prep may one day include a jolt of electricity to the brain. A new study has found that a painless shock delivered through electrodes attached to the forehead made students better at math. (click below to read more)

Researchers at the University of Oxford stuck electrodes to the foreheads of 25 students and had them perform long arithmetic problems, like 12 − 4 + 10 + 12 = 30. Over the course of five days, half of them received tiny pulses of electricity—a fraction of that provided by one AA battery—while the others did not. On the first day, the two groups showed similar abilities, but by the fifth day, the electroshock group was two to five times faster. Even six months later, the students who had received the mini-jolts were 30 percent quicker at making calculations than those who hadn’t. Researchers think the technique, called transcranial random noise stimulation, may synchronize the electrical signals that brain cells use to communicate with one another, but far more research is needed to understand the process and assess it for negative side effects. “We strongly caution you not to try this at home,” study author Jacqueline Thompson tells ScienceNow.org, “no matter how tempted you may be to slap a battery on your kid’s head.”