Don't understand math? Electrical stimulation of your brain could help, a team of international scientists said Tuesday, whose findings shed light on the links between brain activity and learning processes.
While disparities in mathematics proficiency are well known and contribute to the widening of social inequalities, a study published in the American journal PLOS Biology highlights a potential means of correcting them.
"People have different brains, and their brains control a large part of their lives," Roi Cohen Kadosh, a neurobiology and cognitive science specialist at the University of Surrey in the UK and lead author of the study, told AFP.
“We think about the environment all the time. We often wonder if we're going to the right school, if we have the right teacher. But it's also our biology. Some people have difficulties, and if we can help their brains reach their full potential, then we'll open many doors that would otherwise be closed to them,” he adds.
– Electrical stimulation –
Previous studies have shown the involvement of certain neuronal activities and brain areas, including the dorsolateral prefrontal and posterior parietal cortex, in the processes of knowledge acquisition and learning.
The researchers therefore decided to study the activity of these two areas, involved in particular in problem solving and memory, in students at different levels of mathematics.
After discovering that they could predict their mental arithmetic performance on this basis, they sought to improve it using a promising technology called transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS). In other words, electrodes placed around the head emit painless electrical stimulation.
Their experiment, which involved more than 70 students, showed an improvement of 25 to 29% in performance among the weakest students, explains Professor Cohen Kadosh.
"It was not possible to improve those who were really strong, but those who were average or above average, so not extremely good at math, we were able to improve their abilities," he summarizes.
– Helping hand –
Very encouraging results that he now hopes to confirm through future tests on other audiences and extend to other educational fields, such as learning a foreign language.
With the ultimate goal of offering neurostimulation devices to people with learning difficulties.
“The goal isn’t to create something that people have to use for the rest of their lives,” says Roi Cohen Kadosh. “But rather to offer a helping hand. “And from there, they can progress on their own.”
However, to achieve this, these devices will have to be accessible to all, otherwise they will only reinforce socio-economic inequalities, warns the researcher.
Mathematics plays an important societal and economic role, and the current level of young people is not up to scratch.
According to a 2016 OECD study, about a quarter of adults living in developed countries like the United States, France, and Germany have a math level that is equivalent to or lower than that expected of 6- and 7-year-olds. And France ranks as the worst performer in Europe.
English 
French