PRESS ASSOCIATION -- A battery-operated brain stimulator could be used to boost the performance of pianists and tennis players, new research has suggested.
Delivering low-power electrical current through the skull has been shown to speed up the learning of motor skills and scientists believe the technology could help people wanting to become better athletes or musicians, enhance academic learning or aid the recovery of stroke patients
Professor Heidi Johansen-Berg, from Oxford University, led research which involved volunteers pressing buttons in specific sequences, similar to playing a piano.
As they carried out the task, a weak current of around 1-2 milliamps was passed through two rubber electrode pads placed on opposite sides of the head.
The current flowed through the motor cortex of the brain, exciting neurons and speeding up the creation of new nerve connections. Undergoing the stimulation enabled the volunteers to learn the button-press sequences more quickly.
The effect on neurons mirrored that seen in previous brain-training research, said Prof Johansen-Berg. Brain scan studies showed that squeezing a control stick to play a computer game aided the repair of damaged nerve pathways in stroke patients.
Speaking at the British Science Festival at the University of Bradford, Prof Johansen-Berg said: "If you were trying to train a sportsman in a particular skill, for example controlling an oar, if you were to stimulate the brain while they were trying to encode that to memory, the evidence would suggest it would encode more quickly.
"The reason that it's effective isn't that the stimulation itself is some kind of magic, but that when you learn you strengthen the connections between brain cells. We would predict that any task requiring motor learning would be affected by this type of stimulation."
Care had to be taken to deliver the current in the right direction through the brain, she said. Evidence showed that when delivered in the wrong direction it had a negative effect, making neurons less excitable and slowing down learning.
However Prof Johansen-Berg thought it should be possible to devise a safe, pre-programmed home stimulator.