Do not try this at home

You know how “percussive maintenance” aka “beating the crap out of something until it works” could really get things working again? And in films and cartoons, we always see inventors donning complicated helmets which supposedly help them think better? Well, now science has done an experiment and they think that electricity applied to a specific part of your brain will help you do your math better. But before anything else, however desperate you are, do not zap yourself or your kids’ brains with electrical current in order to improve their mathematical ability as this is only an initial study, not to mention unsafe and illegal in many places to do so.

In the Nov. 4 2010 online issue of the journal Current Biology, neuroscientists from the University of Oxford led by Roi Kohen Cadosh, found that by jolting the brain (the parietal lobe located somewhere at the back of your brain) with a weak current of electricity could improve math skills for up to six months. They called this brain zapping transcranial direct current stimulation or TCDS. This kind of zapping of different brain regions has been used to treat people with various neurological conditions. But of course the brain that could be assaulted by a slew of illnesses is the same brain you use for all the acts that make you human — and one of them is doing math.

For their subjects, the researchers used 15 volunteers aged 20 and 21 who had moderate math abilities. They were given a set of symbols that are supposed to represent numbers. The subjects were not familiar with these symbols as representing numbers. This is the same task that we do when are first learning to associate the Arabic numerals we know now, with the concept of numbers. One group received the “zapping” while the other was given a “placebo zapping.” The subjects were then asked to map out these symbols in order of their relation with one another. It turned out that those who were zapped showed significant difference in ability than the ones who did not really get zapped.

The researchers reiterated so many times that no way are they saying that teachers and parents should zap their kids with electrical current to deal with painful math learning. 

I can imagine jokes going around about this though. I am familiar with friends of mine whose parents who set aside special time for math tutoring. I remember being good in math when I was a child and for some reason lost interest along the way. Joey Balmaceda, the Director of the Institute of Mathematics of UP Diliman, once told me that based on studies, students are excited about math only until the third grade. Apparently, kids lose interest when a more rigid form of math begins at the fourth grade. He says this means that how math is taught from that point is also very important.  The “rigor” should not overwhelm the fascination that children have for math.

The researchers did not have the regular student in mind when they did this experiment. They were thinking of people who have severe problems with math — a condition called “dyscalculia.” I have written about this condition before. It has to do with people who have limited function because they cannot come to terms with counting change, items they need to buy, etc. If this kind of zapping could help them function and work, I think it is great to further this work on how much zapping we need to do, how often and if there are natural limits and most of all, dangers to constant zapping. The scientists also cautioned that this kind of zapping will not make you a math genius and win the Fields Medal (the most prestigious Math Prize given to mathematicians under 40) so for those who are already very good in math but need it to make it to the honors list and perfecting math would be the way, forget zapping as a solution, for now.

Again, do not try this at home. You should know that in the previous experiment, another version of “zapping” caused dyscalculia instead. Spare yourselves until science has figured out how to have a safe gadget to help us with our math. We already have enough people in government who cannot count.

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