Zapping the Brain With Magnets Helped People Remember Details in Photos for 24 Hours

A study published in Science Advances details how Northwestern University researchers have invented a non-invasive technique to bombard people's brains with magnetic fields to stimulate memory, reports the Daily Mail . Tests with 16 volunteers showed memory retention lasted for at least 24 hours afterwards, improving the subjects' recall of various connections between a number of photos. The researchers suggest the method could dramatically transform treatments for loss of cognitive function due to aging, strokes, head injuries, and dementia. Their technique uses the magnetic field to stimulate the hippocampus, which governs memory. "The fact we can use non-invasive stimulation to increase excitability in this targeted brain network means we're making the network do more of what it naturally does to succeed at memory formation," says Northwestern Professor Joel Voss. Participants underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to measure brain activity while they played a memory game. "Essentially, every day in the experiment that we tested them, subjects would play the memory game, where they would have to remember that a picture went in a particular spot or they'd have to remember that two pictures went together while we used MRI to measure their brain activity," Voss says. "And what stimulation did was improve their performance to be able to play that game and improve the activity of their memory network while playing the game."