Mild electric currents aid memory

Alok Jha, science correspondent
Monday November 6, 2006
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1940432,00.html">The Guardian</a>

Scientists have discovered a surprising way of improving memory: passing electricity through the brain while you are asleep. They have found that mild electrical stimulation at the right frequency improved people's ability to remember words on waking up...

Jan Born, a neuroscientist at the University of Lübeck in Germany who led the research, said the electrical current, applied via electrodes stuck to the scalp, seemed to enhance a part of the sleep cycle linked to consolidating word memory. Dr Born had 13 medical students learn a list of words and tested how many they remembered after a set time. He had them repeat the exercise after a nap...

The researchers think their electrical stimulation enhanced the early part of the volunteers' sleep cycle called "slow wave sleep". During slow wave sleep there are regular electrical fluctuations in the prefrontal neocortex, which is linked to conscious thought and spatial reasoning.