Rhode Island students are not improving fast enough in reading and math.
That's the conclusion after standardized New England Common Assessment Program (NECAP) test scores were released earlier this year, according to the Providence Journal.
This lack of progress is especially troubling at the high school level, where 45 percent of students scored so low on the tough 11th grade math test that they would all be at risk for not graduating if this were 2012, the year more rigorous high school diploma requirements go into effect.
So, can you increase your kids math skills with the use of a painless method of electrical brain stimulation?
It may be the future way of getting a leg up on your academic competition.
TDCS involves stimulating specific regions of the brain with low-level electrical currents to enhance or reduce the activity of neurons, according to USA Today . Over the last decade, the procedure has shown promise at improving brain functioning in stroke victims as well as in people with Parkinson's disease. This is the first study to show that TDCS can help healthy individuals do better on math tests.
"As our aim is eventually to help children when they are experiencing learning difficulties with numbers, we wanted the adult subjects to learn new material (the artificial numbers) rather than test them with material that they already know," said Roi Cohen Kadosh, a cognitive neuroscientist at Oxford's department of experimental psychology.
The results of the tests showed the brain stimulation improved the participants' ability to learn the new numbers, and those improvements lasted for six months.
Cohen Kadosh said the next step is to test the technique on people who are among the 20% of the population with moderate to severe numerical disabilities, as well as on those who lose their skill with numbers as a result of stroke or degenerative disease.
Comments
Boy, this is weird. I'm not sure I think this is a good idea. Sounds like a Frankenstein experiment.
Nancy Z-Grand Rapids Public Health Examiner
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