Scientists can now change how people think

Researchers have developed a possibility through which they can change the way a person thinks.

A team from Boston University (BU) looked into a way through brain stimulation to enhance brain’s ability to learn and control the behavior of a person with also changing how they think. The researchers made use of an innovative kind of brain stimulation known as high-definition transcranial alternating current stimulation (HD-tACS) through which they can turbo charge the two areas of human brain related with our thinking capabilities.

Researcher Robert Reinhart said in a press release, “If you make an error, the brain area fires. If I tell you that you make an error, it also fires. If something surprises you, it fires.” His statement was about the medial frontal cortex of the brain that he named as ‘alarm bell of the brain’.

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The result of the research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), was that through stimulation the medial frontal and lateral prefrontal cortex of the brain can possibly alter the way a person learns. The findings also showed that applying electrical stimulation through HD-TACS rapidly and reversibly increased or decreased a healthy person’s brain function, which in turn lead to changes in behavior, reported Business Insider.

“These are maybe the two most fundamental brain areas involved with executive function and self-control,” Reinhart said.

The experiment was conducted on 30 healthy people whose brains were stimulated. By examining brain activity through EEG, the results were significant and showed the learning ability was enhanced and error chances were reduced greatly. However, the volunteers were able to reverse to their original brain activity and learning process when the stimulation was disrupted. “We were shocked by the results and how quickly the effects of the stimulation could be reversed.”

Furthermore, researcher David Somers raised a question that how far can this technology take a person because everyone would want to enhance their brain activity. This technology can be similar to smart drugs but with fewer risks. Though this technology can prove to be game changer, yet there arises a question of who should have permission for such a technology, as per Futurism.