Admit it: Your maths could be better. Well, neuroscientist Roi Cohen Kadosh might have just the thing. He is using the gentle currents of tDCS to improve the way people handle numbers. He gave subjects the task of learning a set of numbers. Then half of the subjects got stimulation and half did not. After training, the stimulated subjects responded more automatically than the non-stimulated group, indicating that they were processing them more efficiently. Remarkably, Cohen Kadosh says, “the effect lasted for six months.”
However, the effects of training on their own can go some way to explaining the improvement seen in these studies, Jenny Crinion says. So one lesson the studies can teach us is about the power of putting in the hours. Plus, the stimulation does not work in isolation. “Whatever you’re practicing has to be the right thing and you need to pair this with stimulation in the right bit of the brain,” she says.
What if the brain is not infinitely malleable? “If I improve your ability in one cognitive area, such as memory, could I at the same time be making it worse in another?” Chambers asks.
This has not stopped commercial companies from pricking up their ears. Medical technology firms such as Soterix and Magstim supply researchers with their kit, but do not sell to the general public, though some outfits have sprung up offering DIY versions for US$99.
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
As former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) wrapped up his visit to the People’s Republic of China, he received his share of attention. Certainly, the trip must be seen within the full context of Ma’s life, that is, his eight-year presidency, the Sunflower movement and his failed Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, as well as his eight years as Taipei mayor with its posturing, accusations of money laundering, and ups and downs. Through all that, basic questions stand out: “What drives Ma? What is his end game?” Having observed and commented on Ma for decades, it is all ironically reminiscent of former US president Harry