Science and Technology Daily, Beijing, August 22 (Reporter Zhang Mengran) According to a study published in the British journal "Nature Neuroscience", brain stimulation for 20 minutes for four consecutive days can improve two types of memory for people over 65 years old. , the effect lasts for at least one month.
Short-term memory of some information (such as the platform number when catching a train) requires working memory. The information in this short-term memory is kept for a short time and has a limited capacity. If new memory activities are inserted, the information will exceed the capacity, or Without repeating it over and over, information decays quickly and is forgotten, with no way to recover.
Recalling where you parked your car at the airport after a vacation is an example of long-term memory, which biologically means that short-term memory can become long-term memory after consolidation.
People's performance on these different types of memory varies widely, and performance tends to decline with age.
This time, Boston University researcher Robert Reinhardt and colleagues wanted to improve both types of memory in 150 subjects between the ages of 65 and 88.
While the subjects heard and immediately recalled five lists of 20 words, the researchers delivered electrical current with electrodes embedded in the caps.
Building on past research, the research team targeted two specific brain regions with two different stimulation frequencies.
Stimulation of the inferior parietal lobule at 4 Hz was found to improve recall of words at the end of the list (pointing to working memory), while stimulation of the dorsolateral prefrontal lobe at 60 Hz helped recall words at the beginning of the list (representing storage in long-term memory) , participants with the lowest cognitive performance at the start of the study benefited the most from brain stimulation.
Further research is needed to determine whether these effects persist beyond a month, and whether these specific approaches can also enhance memory function in people with cognitive impairment due to brain disease and at risk for dementia.
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It is generally believed that the brain's memory is divided into short-term memory and long-term memory.
While short-term memory is stored in specific patterns of activity in neurons, long-term memory is based on new connections between neurons, and repetition of what you want to remember stimulates the formation of synapses.
The study found that stimulating specific brain regions with different frequencies improved two different types of memory in older adults.
However, it is only a preliminary study, and the target group is relatively limited. How long the improvement can last and whether it will cause memory disorders requires further testing.
It remains to be seen whether electrical stimulation can work on the memory of those with brain disorders.