(Image source: UCLA/LA Times)

BY JIM FLINK

If you tend to be on the forgetful side, all you might need is a little jolt. A new study out of UCLA says -- an electrical shock might be the thing to jar a foggy memory. Here’s Slate with more.

“In a small sampling, patients with epilepsy, including some with memory impairment, had wires inserted into their brains, delivering electrical currents to clusters of neurons that no longer functioned properly and caused seizures.”

The researchers asked the patients to play a taxi driving video game, which tested their spatial memory. The electric wires stimulated different parts of the brain as they were learning their virtual environment. The Guardian explains how the patients performed.

“Six of them took shorter and faster paths to the locations they had learned during stimulation to the entorhinal cortex, recognizing the landmarks more readily, and even finding shortcuts, to navigate the required routes more quickly.”

The researchers called the cortex “the gateway to hippocampus” — meaning shocking that part of the brain helps experience get turned into memory. A writer for MyHealthNewsDaily explains how the findings could help those who have trouble remembering new information.

“Because the brain stimulation was delivered only while participants were learning, the findings suggest that such stimulation would not need to be continuous in order to improve memory .. This could mean that a device implanted in the brain could be designed to switch on only at certain times during daily activities, in order to boost memory…”

The study only looked at seven patients, so the sample size was pretty limited. Still it’s giving hope to patients with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. The Wall Street Journal explains why.

“With Parkinson’s patients, a lot of those folks are also quite elderly, and some of them do have dementia symptoms as well, so the thinking is if this can be used in Parkinson’s patients, then theoretically, at least, there’s no reason why it couldn’t be used in Alzheimer’s patients as well.”

The researchers say more study is needed, to better understand the impact of shock therapy and memory loss.