Small cramps in the temporal lobe, right in the area between the ears and the temples, improve the short-term verbal memory of the person who suffers them. That is the finding of specialists from the Mayo Clinic in the United States who have just published their conclusions in the journal Brain.
The participants in the experiment remembered more words from a list that was previously shown if they made the effort to bring them to mind right after receiving a low intensity current in the referred brain area. One of them stated that it was as if the images corresponding to the different terms were easier to represent.
Tickle the brain
Michal Kucewicz, a researcher in the Department of Neurology at the Mayo Clinic and a co-author of the work, makes an analogy to describe the experiment: “It’s like tickling the brain. It is exciting to have discovered that language memory improves with direct stimulation of this little-studied area ”.
The test was done with 22 epileptic patients who were being evaluated for surgeries that would end their seizures. People with epilepsy often suffer from memory problems due to their condition, and electrodes are often implanted in the brain to measure their seizures and find out where to operate. The combination of the two factors made these individuals the ideal guinea pigs , although they all gave their consent, of course.
In the experiment, patients read a list of words that was displayed on a computer screen. Simultaneously, small electrical currents were administered through the electrodes. Afterwards, they were asked to recall the terms in whatever order they wanted.
Result: of the 22 subjects, only the four to whom currents were applied in the temporal lobe improved their memory results.
Hope for memory problems
Jamie Van Gompel, a neurosurgeon at the Mayo Clinic and one of the study’s authors, believes that “this discovery could lead to the development of stimulation devices that improve cognitive and memory problems,” although like his colleagues, he acknowledges that such specific characteristics of the study require prudence when assessing its importance: it has been done with epileptics – people who often suffer from memory deficits – medicated with drugs that can affect the results.
However, there are reasons for hope. Many brain diseases affect memory, and therapies and medications often have limited effectiveness. The use of electrostimulation, common in neurology, has been little studied in relation to its effects on the ability to remember, and is holding surprises. In October 2017, neuroscientists at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, discovered that low-intensity brain electrostimulation improved the ability of people with epilepsy to recognize faces among others that are very similar.
