It might be easy to understand the idea that stimulating the brain will always pay off for our better functioning, right? And yet the findings of a recent study by researchers at the University of California seem to indicate that we must be careful about ‘where we touch’ .
The research, published in the scientific journal Neuropsychologia, uses transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) in two different brain areas and shows that the effects on performance in a memory task are opposite.
The participants in the experiment were divided into two groups, and while some were stimulated with EMT the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, the others were stimulated in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.
Afterwards, everyone did a memory task in which a list of words was presented, and they had to say if each of them was a concrete name (like ‘window’) or abstract (like ‘mercy’). Forty minutes later they were presented with a longer list in which they had to recognize the words they had learned in the initial list.
The results showed that the group that received the TMS in the ventrolateral area of the brain had a more impaired performance in the memory test , while those that had received it in the dorsolateral areas had increased the number of remembered words.
We do not know how long it will be before we have easy access to the transcranial magnetic stimulation technique, but we do know that this is not the only way to improve memory. If you feel like it, reading, physical exercise or memory exercise programs are easy and fun ways to take care of your brain, until the latest technology reaches us.
Marisa Fernández, Senior Neuropsychologist, Unobrain
