Applying electrical stimulation to the scalp and the underlying motor regions of the brain could make you more skilled at delicate tasks. Research published today in the open access journal BMC Neuroscience shows that a non-invasive brain-stimulation technique, transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), is able to improve the use of a person's non-dominant hand.
Drs. Gottfried Schlaug and Bradley Vines from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, tested the effects of using tDCS over one side or both sides of the brain on sixteen healthy, right-handed volunteers, as well as testing the effect of simply pretending to carry out the procedure. The volunteers were not aware of which of the three procedures they were receiving. The test involved using the fingers of the left hand to key in a series of numbers displayed on a computer screen.
The results were striking; stimulating the brain over both the right and left motor regions ('dual hemisphere' tDCS) resulted in a 24% improvement in the subjects' scores. This was significantly better than stimulating the brain only over one motor region or using the sham treatment (16% and 12% improvements, respectively).