Learning and Brain Stimulation-gesture and tRNS

The thought of math may leave a nasty taste in your mouth, and math may very well be the bane of your academic career, especially if you struggle with a learning disability. However, there is no need to lose hope, in today's modern world of neuroscience research and discoveries,  have reveled different forms of brain stimuli can aid children in learning mathematics. In a Neuroscience News article “Brain Stimulation May Help Children With Learning Difficulties” Oxford Researchers investigate the possibility of using neurostimulation as a tool to aid children (with learning disabilities) in learning  by stimulating the dorsolateral prefrontal cortices via transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS) during a learning phase in which student played a numerical learning game developed by researchers. Results show that students with disabilities who received low electrical currents to the brain via tRNS improved learning and cognition in those with learning disabilities or developing atypical brains.  

This trend of brain stimulation and improved learning is not unique to Dr. Looi ‘s research conducted at Oxford University; Dr Wakefield of Loyola University Chicago has also found that brain stimulation in young children not only helps them understand math but improves their ability to replicate the learning process later. Dr. Wakefeild’s paper “Gesture helps learners learn, but not merely by guiding their visual attention” revels that synchronized attention from speech and gesture promotes attention to the problem causing children to better understand and replicate problem-solving on learning. From both Dr Wakefield and Dr Looi ‘s research, we can learn more about brain stimulation and its benefits to cognition and learning, hopefully leading to future real-life applications we can apply in classrooms to improve child development.

Work Cited  
Wakefield, E., Novack, M. A., Congdon, E. L., Franconeri, S., & Goldin‐Meadow, S. (2018). Gesture helps learners learn, but not merely by guiding their visual attention. Developmental science, 21(6), e12664. 

Oxford University (2017, July 6). Brain Stimulation May Help Children With Learning Difficulties. NeuroscienceNew. Retrieved July 6, 2017 from http://neurosciencenews.com/math-learning-brain-stimulations-7042/ 

Link  

Article: https://neurosciencenews.com/math-learning-brain-stimulations-7042/