Neuroscience Increasing memory performance through neurotechnology

Researchers at EPFL have improved the memory performance of healthy people. To do so, they have combined virtual reality, non-invasive brain stimulation and brain imaging. This is a first step towards treating dementia without drugs or surgery.

As we get older, it becomes increasingly difficult to remember where certain objects are - be it keys or where we parked our car. This spatial memory deteriorates even further with the onset of dementia, as the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) explained in a press release.

The study, published in the journal "Science Advances", shows that targeted, painless electrical impulses applied to the hippocampus and adjacent structures - a deep brain region involved in memory and spatial navigation - can improve the brain's ability to remember places and orient itself.

This study is the result of a collaboration between two EPFL laboratories. The experiment begins by attaching electrodes to the heads of healthy volunteers to stimulate the hippocampus and adjacent structures.

This technique sends targeted impulses without causing any discomfort. The volunteers are then immersed in a virtual world using virtual reality goggles. There, they have to navigate through a series of locations and remember landmarks.

"When the stimulation was applied, we observed a significant improvement in participants' recall time - the time it took them to start moving to the place where they thought the object was," explains a co-author of the study.

The experiment was conducted in a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner. The team obtained real-time images of brain activity that allowed them to track the responses of the hippocampus and surrounding regions during spatial navigation tasks.

SDA