BETTER AUDITORY MEMORY WITH MAGNETS
Improving memory with magnets
The ability to remember sounds, and manipulate them in our minds, is incredibly important to our daily lives—without it we would not be able to understand a sentence, or do simple arithmetic. New research is shedding light on how sound memory works in the brain, and is even demonstrating a means to improve it. Scientists previously knew that a neural network of the brain called the dorsal stream was responsible for aspects of auditory memory. Inside the dorsal stream were rhythmic electrical pulses called theta waves, yet the role of these waves in auditory memory were until recently a complete mystery. To learn precisely the relationship between theta waves and auditory memory, and to see how memory could be boosted, researchers at the Montreal Neurological Institute of McGill University gave seventeen individuals auditory memory tasks that required them to recognize a pattern of tones when it was reversed. Listeners performed this task while being recorded with a combination of magnetoencephalography (MEG) and electroencephalography (EEG). The MEG/EEG revealed the amplitude and frequency signatures of theta waves in the dorsal stream while the subjects worked on the memory tasks. It also revealed where the theta waves were coming from in the brain. Using that data, researchers then applied transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) at the same theta frequency to the subjects while they performed the same tasks, to enhance the theta waves and measure the effect on the subjects' memory performance. They found that when they applied TMS, subjects performed better at auditory memory tasks. This was only the case when the TMS matched the rhythm of natural theta waves in the brain. When the TMS was arrhythmic, there was no effect on performance, suggesting it is the manipulation of theta waves, not simply the application of TMS, which alters performance.
The ability to remember sounds, and manipulate them in our minds, is incredibly important to our daily lives—without it we would not be able to understand a sentence, or do simple arithmetic. New research is shedding light on how sound memory works in the brain, and is even demonstrating a means to improve it. Scientists previously knew that a neural network of the brain called the dorsal stream was responsible for aspects of auditory memory. Inside the dorsal stream were rhythmic electrical pulses called theta waves, yet the role of these waves in auditory memory were until recently a complete mystery. To learn precisely the relationship between theta waves and auditory memory, and to see how memory could be boosted, researchers at the Montreal Neurological Institute of McGill University gave seventeen individuals auditory memory tasks that required them to recognize a pattern of tones when it was reversed. Listeners performed this task while being recorded with a combination of magnetoencephalography (MEG) and electroencephalography (EEG). The MEG/EEG revealed the amplitude and frequency signatures of theta waves in the dorsal stream while the subjects worked on the memory tasks. It also revealed where the theta waves were coming from in the brain. Using that data, researchers then applied transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) at the same theta frequency to the subjects while they performed the same tasks, to enhance the theta waves and measure the effect on the subjects' memory performance. They found that when they applied TMS, subjects performed better at auditory memory tasks. This was only the case when the TMS matched the rhythm of natural theta waves in the brain. When the TMS was arrhythmic, there was no effect on performance, suggesting it is the manipulation of theta waves, not simply the application of TMS, which alters performance.
This has been ascribed and adapted by me from a Research Article of ''The Neuroscience Paper ''
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