Brain Gain

A recent experiment showed that running a weak electric current through the brains of sleeping student volunteers improved their performance on a word-recall task!Prior to sleep,the students were made to memorize 46 word pairs and,on average,recalled 36.5 of them.After the electrically stimulated sleep,they improved their recall to 41.2 words,compared with just 39.5 words for the group that didn't receive the jolt.The findings suggested that electrical stimulation of the brain can exert a synchronizing effect on individual neurons and produce beneficial results.