Steroids for Your Brain

Absolutely amazing:

The scientists had volunteers move a cursor horizontally across a screen by pinching a device called a force transducer between thumb and index finger. The harder each subject squeezed, the faster the cursor moved. Each player was asked to move the cursor back and forth between a series of targets, trying to travel the course as quickly as possible without overshooting. The group trained 45 minutes a day for five days. By the end of training, the players were making far fewer errors.

The scientists also trained another group of people on the same game, but with a twist. They put a battery on top of the head of each subject, sending a small current through the surface of the brain toward a group of neurons in the primary motor cortex. The electric stimulation allowed people to learn the game better. By the end of five days of training, the battery-enhanced players could move the cursor faster and make fewer errors than the control group.

And the advantage was not fleeting. For three months Krakauer and Celnik had their subjects come back into the lab from time to time to show off their game-playing skills. Everyone got rusty over time, but at the end of the period, the people who had gotten the electrode boost remained superior to the others.

via The Brain: Why Athletes Are Geniuses | Memory, Emotions, & Decisions | DISCOVER Magazine. [Emphasis added].

This raises some ethical questions about sports and “brain doping” but it also would be an astounding way to increase the speed of learning new things if it works for more than just physical tasks. Now they need to start selling those ab stimulating electric belts in a headband size.