Claims magnetic brain stimulation helps memory

“Magnetic brain stimulation treatment shown to boost memory,” The Guardian reports. A new study found that magnetic pulses improved recall skills in healthy individuals. It is hoped that the findings of this study could lead to therapies for people with memory deficits such as dementia.

Researchers investigated the effects of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) every day for five days on connections within the brain and on associative memory (the ability to learn and remember relationships between items – such as “1066” and the “Battle of Hastings”).

TMS is a non-invasive technique that uses an electromagnet placed against the skull to produce magnetic pulses that stimulate the brain.

In this study, TMS of a specific area of the brain was compared to “sham” stimulation in 16 healthy adults.

TMS was found to improve performance on the associative memory test by over 20%, whereas sham stimulation had no significant effect.

Read more....