Magnetic field treatment has

'potential' to treat memory

disorders
3 September, 2014 | By The Press Association
Memory can be boosted by using a magnetic field to stimulate part of the brain, a US study has shown.
The effect lasts at least 24 hours after the stimulation is given, improving the ability
of volunteers to remember words linked to photos of faces.
Scientists believe the discovery could lead to new treatments for loss of memory
function caused by ageing, strokes, head injuries and early Alzheimers disease.
Kead researcher Dr Joel Voss, from Northwestern University in Chicago, said: We
show for the first time that you can specifically change memory functions of the
brain in adults without surgery or drugs, which have not proven effective.
This non-invasive stimulation improves the ability to learn new things.
It has tremendous potential for treating memory disorders
Dr Joel Voss
The scientists focused on associative memory, the ability to learn and remember
relationships between unrelated items.
An example of associative memory would be linking someone to a particular
restaurant where you both once dined.
It involves a network of different brain regions working in concert with a key
memory structure called the hippocampus, which has been compared to an
orchestra conductor directing brain activity.
Stimulating the hippocampus caused the orchestra musicians the brain regions
to play more in time, thereby tightening up their performance.
A total of 16 volunteers aged 21 to 40 took part in the study, agreeing to undergo
20 minutes of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) every day for five days.

Joel Voss
TMS directs a magnetic field at a specific area of the skull to induce weak electrical
currents in the brain.
It is used to test brain circuits in patients with stroke, multiple sclerosis, motor
neurone disease and other conditions, and has been shown to alleviate some forms
of depression.
The hippocampus is too deeply embedded in the brain to be stimulated directly by
TMS, but the scientists found they could stimulate it indirectly, via a superficial
brain region highly connected to the structure that lies a centimetre below the skull
surface.
At the start of a series of tests, participants were shown 20 photos of human faces
while at the same time hearing words being read aloud.
After either undergoing TMS or receiving no stimulation (placebo condition) they
were later shown the photos again and asked to recall which words were associated
with them.
They remembered more face-word pairings after the stimulation than before,
which means their learning ability improved, Dr Voss said.
That didnt happen for the placebo condition or in another control experiment with
additional subjects.
Scans confirmed that the stimulation caused the brain regions to become more
synchronised with each other and the hippocampus.
This opens up a whole new area for treatment studies where we will try to see if we can
improve function in people who really need it
Dr Joel Voss
Greater improvement in synchronicity or connectivity led to better memory
performance.
The results are published in the latest edition of thejournal Science.
Dr Voss added: This opens up a whole new area for treatment studies where we
will try to see if we can improve function in people who really need it.
For a person with brain damage or a memory disorder, those networks are
disrupted so even a small change could translate into gains in their function.
In a forthcoming trial, the team will study the effect of TMS on people with early
loss of memory ability.
But Dr Voss cautioned that years of more research were needed to determine
whether the technique was safe or effective enough to help Alzheimers sufferers or
people with other conditions that affected memory.
Read the full study paper in Science