Stimulation of electricity leads to a significant improvement in the memory of older people.

The human brain is a very complex system. Even to solve the simplest mathematical problem, the brain must perform a large number of intermediate operations. And in order for these operations to become possible, a person has the ability to keep in mind small pieces of information that are needed for current work.

Information is stored in the so-called "working memory", which is associated with both short-term and long-term memory. In general, the whole system is responsible for making decisions (any) and logical thinking. But, unfortunately, working memory works differently for people from different age categories.

On average, it begins to decline at the age of about 30 years due to the fact that the brain areas gradually “dissynchronize”. By 60-70 years, many people this process becomes so obvious that there are cognitive difficulties. For example, it becomes difficult to remember a phone number or remember a certain term.

According to experts from the University of Boston, brain electrical stimulation makes it possible to return the old cognitive abilities to the brain of an older person . Scientists managed to achieve a significant effect, which, unfortunately, turned out to be short-lived.
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The experiment involved 42 volunteers aged 20–29 years and 42 elderly people aged 60–76 years.

Initially, participants were tested for functionality of working memory. They were shown two images, between which it was necessary to find differences. After a long period of time, these differences needed to be remembered and called again. As it turned out, representatives of the older age group performed this work more slowly, giving less accurate answers than the young participants in the experiment.


Research supervisor Rob Reinhart with the equipment used in the experiments

Scientists believe that the reason is that the elderly are out of sync rhythms of the brain responsible for the interaction of different parts of the brain. Namely, those who are involved in the transfer of information and memories. This assumption was confirmed after electroencephalography of all participants.

Scientists have suggested that electrical stimulation allows you to synchronize different parts of the brain again, returning the rhythms to the previous mode of operation. In particular, theta rhythms should correspond to faster gamma rhythms between brain regions such as the prefrontal cortex and the temporal cortex of the left hemisphere.

It was decided to try out transcranial stimulation with alternating current. The electrodes provided a soft current effect on certain areas of the brain. The impact of the current on the brain for 25 minutes was able to return the efficiency of the working memory of the elderly to the level of young volunteers.

Unfortunately, the duration of the effect did not exceed 50 minutes after the end of the procedure. The most interesting thing is that transcranial electrostimulation improved the working memory of young participants. After this procedure, representatives of the younger age group coped with their tasks better than before.

In the future, scientists plan to analyze the results in order to understand how repeated stimulation of this type can affect the work of the brain. Perhaps the results of the work will help develop new methods for improving age-related changes in the cognitive abilities of elderly patients.

The results of the current study are published in the authoritative scientific journal Nature Neuroscience .