"With just five days of cognitive training and noninvasive, painless brain stimulation, we were able to bring about long-lasting improvements in cognitive and brain functions," says Roi Cohen Kadosh of the University of Oxford.
Incredibly, the improvements held for a period of six months after training. No one knows exactly how this relatively new method of stimulation, called transcranial random noise stimulation (TRNS), works. But the researchers say the evidence suggests that it allows the brain to work more efficiently by making neurons fire more synchronously.
It looks like the information comes from these press releases:
This is certainly very cool. Although, I think the scientist behind the study was a bit reserved about making too high claims. One possibility was for instance that the heightened ability in math might have been at a cost of other brain functions. It will, however, be very interesting to follow this up and see if they find any side effects or if it is purely an improvement.
I think this is not about learning a new ability, but strengthening one which you already have. For instance, taking caffeine would increase your focus and you would improve in a lot of mental tasks, and hence an external reinforcement can at least improve intrinsic skills.
The special thing about this compared to simply taking drugs which there already are multiple of which improve mental abilities, this seems to have an lasting effect that doesn’t wear of for months.
Anyhow, there already is quite simple method to get a significant improvement in mental maths - just read “Secrets of Mental Math”, applied number theory shortcuts.
I’m deeply skeptical about this stuff - there have been scientists making extravagant claims about ways of boosting brain power in this way for some years now, without much convincing evidence. This article from three years ago gives a good skeptical viewpoint:
‘Thinking caps’ are pseudoscience masquerading as neuroscience
With just five days of cognitive training and noninvasive, painless brain stimulation
Isn't that just like saying "With n days of swimming lessons and eating doughnuts we were able to significantly boost swimming abilities. Who knows what mechanism is at work here".
Do you have the original article(s)? I wonder if they even did single-blind.