According to a study conducted by researchers at the Mayo Clinic in the United States, stimulating part of the brain with weak electric shocks can improve verbal memory. Explanations.
To say that you have a good or bad memory is a misnomer. In reality, humans are endowed with four types of memory: working memory, short-term memory, visual memory and verbal memory. The latter allows us to retain sounds, words, stories or information, sometimes with extreme precision. This for several seconds, or even several minutes. As the site reports EurekAlert, dhe researchers from the Mayo Clinic, an American hospital and university federation, have discovered that electrical stimulation of a part of the brain, the temporal lobe, would improve verbal memory.
“Tickle” the brain
Twenty-two patient volunteers participated in the study. They were to undergo an assessment test before surgery. Each patient had to read a list of words, electrodes planted in the brain. The latter was then “tickled” by a very weak electrical stimulation. Then each patient had to give the list of words again, in any order.
Of the twenty-two patients, four had their temporal lobe stimulated. In the others it was other parts of the brain. The researchers then found that it was these four people who saw their memory performance increase. One patient even said that it was easier for him to imagine the words to remember them after.
An economic stake
The researchers’ discovery is not useful for the sake of performance. But it could give rise to a new type of therapy for people with verbal memory impairment. Because many diseases related to the brain, such as Alzheimer’s disease, sometimes have serious and irreversible consequences on memory. According to Jamie Van Gompel, Mayo Clinic neurosurgeon specializing in brain stimulation and author of the study, “these findings may lead to new stimulation devices that treat deficits in memory and cognition.”
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