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Magnetic Brain Stimulation Makes Learning Easier
cylonlover writes "Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a technology that temporarily activates – or inactivates – parts of the brain using magnetic stimulation. Its ability to selectively turn areas of the brain on or off allows the functions and interconnections of the brain to by studied in a noninvasive and painless manner. Now researchers have shown that the technology can be used to enable rats to learn more easily. While smarter rats probably aren't high on anyone's wish list, the technology shows potential for allowing TMS to better treat a variety of brain disorders and diseases in humans, such as severe depression and schizophrenia."
Can we get the actual paper(s) linked to in the summary rather than just this "Scientists somewhere found something cool and that's about all we'll tell you" crap? Occasionally, I'm interested in details that are lacking. For anyone interested, Trippe et al 2011 J neurosci and Mix et al Euro J neurosci seem to be the articles they're talking about.
Having said that, they're behind paywalls, and people understandably hate that too...
I've seen a few papers like this one that suggests magnetic fields cause new neurons to form in rats. The research here suggests it "modifies electric activity and protein expression in the rat neocortex." I don't see why the two would be mutually exclusive when it comes to learning in the short term, but I'd also be interested in what the longer term effects are. Skimming over the newer article, it only tracked the rats 7 days, the paper about neurogenesis seems to show effects after nine weeks.
As I said, I only skimmed the articles, and I don't really have a clear understanding of the brain architecture, but it will be interesting if this treatment proves to have short and long term beneficial effects, or at least good short term effects and no bad effects from the increased neurons in the brain.
If this turns out to be a "flowers for algernon" situation though, I've read that book, it's sad, and I want no part of it.