PBS Assistant Professor Robert Reinhart discusses Electrical Stimulation to Improve Memory in Old Age
PBS Assistant Professor Robert Reinhart discusses Electrical Stimulation to Improve Memory in Old Age. From the article:
Reinhart, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences and the director of the Cognitive & Clinical Neuroscience Laboratory, studies human cognition with the goal of developing drug-free therapeutics for people suffering from brain disorders. He was recently honored for his work, receiving the 2022 Science and PINS Prize for Neuromodulation.
For his latest research, published in Nature Neuroscience on August 22, 2022, Reinhart and the members of his lab focused on adults aged 65 and older. Utilizing a soft cap covered in electrodes, they administered both low- and high-frequency electrical stimulation for 20 minutes on 4 consecutive days, while reading subjects a list of 20 words. They then tested those subjects’ immediate recall of the words as well as their memory of them one month later. The results showed improvements in both short- and long-term memory.