It's an unfortunate fact of life — as we age, we tend to become more forgetful.
Aging brains struggle especially with working memory. Called the workbench of the mind, working memory allows us to store useful bits of information for a few seconds, and use that information across different brain areas to help solve problems, plan, or make decisions.
Researchers are trying to understand why this ability fades as we age, and whether we can slow, or reverse, that decline.
One leading hypothesis contends that working memory works by far-flung brain areas firing synchronously. When two areas are on the same brain wavelength, communication is tight, and working memory functions seamlessly.
But as we age, these brain areas start falling out of step, and these once tightly linked brain areas are no longer on the same page. A study published Monday in Nature Neuroscience demonstrates a link between these mismatched brain rhythms and declines in working memory in older adults and shows that a precise form of electrical stimulation applied to the scalp can coax these brain areas back into sync.
Applied to the brain via a skullcap studded with electrodes, an experimental form of transcranial brain stimulation delivers alternating current to a small group of neurons to nudge them to a specific wavelength. Imagine two giant pendulums swinging at different rates. The brain stimulation nudges each pendulum with a pair of electrical hands pushing at the same frequency, causing them to sync up and swing synchronously.
