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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

Science Mag [sciencemag.org]:

despite its critical role, working memory is a fragile cognitive resource that declines with age, Reinhart says. Previous studies had suggested that reduced working-memory performance in the elderly is linked to uncoupled activity in different brain areas [nature.com]. So Reinhart and his team set out to test whether recoupling brain waves in older adults could boost the brain’s ability to temporarily store information.

To do so, the researchers used jolts of weak electrical current to synchronize waves in the prefrontal and temporal cortex—two brain areas critical for cognition—and applied the current to the scalps of 42 healthy people in their 60s and 70s who showed no signs of decline in mental ability. Before their brains were zapped, participants looked at a series of images: an everyday object, followed briefly by a blank screen, and then either an identical or a modified version of the same object. The goal was to spot whether the two images were different.

Then the participants took the test again, while their brains were stimulated with a current. After about 25 minutes of applying electricity, participants were on average more accurate at identifying changes in the images [nature.com] than they were before the stimulation. Following stimulation, their performance in the test was indistinguishable from that of a group of 42 people in their 20s.

tl;dr;: electrocute grandpa, then ask him where he hid his will.

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