Placeholder Image

字幕列表 影片播放

  • Do you have memories you wish you could hold onto forever?

  • Do you sometimes feel like they're getting less vibrant?

  • That's probably because our working memory starts to decline as soon as our late twenties!

  • Oh my god it's all downhill from here, isn't it?

  • But new neuroscience research says that electrical stimulation could drastically improve our

  • memory performance.

  • Would you do it?

  • In case you hadn't noticed, your brain is a complicated place.

  • It has lots of different kinds of memory, and working memory is the kind in charge of

  • remembering information that's no longer directly in front of you.

  • This can be the temporary preservation of something that just happened or the retrieval

  • of something from your long-term memory.

  • It's the part of your cognition that's essential for things like processing and understanding

  • language, logical and spatial reasoning, planning, andof courseremembering where you last

  • saw your car keys.

  • Our commonly accepted model for how working memory works is that it's the result of

  • coordination between different kinds of brain waves.

  • Brain waves are the pulses of electrical activity in your neurons, and those pulses can occur

  • at different frequencies, resulting in different types of waves.

  • Gamma waves have a high frequency and are associated with the storage and processing

  • of sensory information.

  • Theta waves have a longer-frequency, and are associated with lots of different brain states,

  • from an engaged brain that's actively monitoring something to a brain during REM sleep.

  • And when your working memory is activatedsay you're pulling a memory from long-term storage

  • because you're looking back on a detail from your wedding daythose two types of

  • waves couple and synchronize to build you a sense-memory picture of the thing you're

  • trying to remember.

  • They work in tandem to weave your memories together.

  • As we get older, our brains change.

  • We may lose gray matter volume, our circulation can get worse so our brains get less blood

  • and oxygenthere are lots of possible structural, neurobiological changes.

  • Another change associated with aging is a decrease in synchronization between regions

  • of the brain.

  • Whereas before you may have been able to recall with perfect clarity the look on your spouses

  • face as you said "I do," as we get older, researchers see brain waves start to pulse

  • out of syncthe coupling and synchronization of brain waves gets off-beatand details

  • like that may fade away.

  • And of course, working memory is important for much more than reminiscing.

  • It's required for daily life functionlike remembering where you keep the knives and

  • forks or retaining new information from a doctor's appointmentso once we start

  • to lose working memory like with age-related dementia, we see a potential decrease in quality

  • of life and independence.

  • Makes sense we'd wanna improve that, right?

  • Now you can, for the low, low price of shocking your brain with electricity!

  • It's actually not as scary as it sounds: this particular study used a non-invasive

  • electrical stimulation method called transcranial alternating-current stimulation tofor lack

  • of a better wordzap the prefrontal and temporal regions of the brain simultaneously.

  • This jumpstarted the off-beat gamma and theta waves back into sync.

  • The result?

  • Before electrical stimulation, a group of test subjects in their 60s and 70s performed

  • significantly worse on a visual working memory task than subjects in their 20s.

  • After 25 minutes of electrical stimulation delivered via star-trek-like headset, the

  • older adults caught up to the younger groupboth age groups performed the same on the task.

  • Their brains were basically zapped back in time!

  • There was also a group of participants in the younger group who performed worse than

  • their fellow young peers on the exercise.

  • After the same amount of electrical stimulation, their performance on the task had also improved,

  • so y'know there's hope!

  • Plus the improvements in cognitive performance for the older group lasted for at least 50

  • minutes, which was the duration of the experiment, so who knows!

  • Maybe the effects lasted even longer.

  • People may balk when they hear about electrical stimulation of the brain.

  • It may call to mind electroshock therapy, a rather blunt instrument used in the early

  • parts of the 20th century on patients with psychosis or schizophrenia, often against

  • their will and without much demonstrable therapeutic effect.

  • But while those early cases may be infamous in the world of medical ethics, there are

  • now plenty more examples of safe and effective electrical stimulation of the brain.

  • Doctors are now using transcranial alternating-current stimulation (TACS)—the same technology used

  • in this memory studyor Transcranial direct current stimulation (TDCS) to test treatments

  • for things like severe depression or to enhance concentration.

  • While relatively safe in the context of a controlled research environment, the hype

  • around the possibility of electrical stimulation devices has led to a trend of consumer electronicsbrain

  • stimulating onesor even DIY brain stimulation kits.

  • Whichit doesn't take a genius to guessis not a good idea.

  • Do NOT try this at home because if you do, you risk seriously messing up your head with

  • mood changes, or even inducing seizures.

  • This study and many others like it working on what we call the 'entrainment' of brain

  • waves is just the very beginning of understanding where and how memory function breaks down,

  • and what the long-term solutions might bethe neuroscience community is just dipping its

  • toes into how we could put this into play as a real-world treatment for the aging brainpreserving

  • your memories, and hopefully your quality of life, for as long as you live.

  • You've probably seen our new show, Sick.

  • It's all about what's happening in your body when things start to go wrong.

  • We're talking Lyme disease, measles, lupus, and more.

  • Is there a disease or illness you want us to cover?

  • Let us know down in the comments.

  • Make sure to subscribe to get all your science news.

  • Thanks for watching.

Do you have memories you wish you could hold onto forever?

字幕與單字

單字即點即查 點擊單字可以查詢單字解釋

B1 中級

用電扎腦能提高記憶力嗎? (Could Zapping Your Brain With Electricity Improve Your Memory?)

  • 3 0
    林宜悉 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
影片單字