As I was scanning the news in the tech world, my eyes caught sight of a story I couldn’t pass up. It was on msnbc.com and it focused on a study conducted by our friends at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). They took a group of willing volunteers, attached some wires to the volunteers’ craniums and then zapped them with two milliamps of electricity. The volunteers played a game used by soldiers to train for combat.

The results of the test? The gamers getting their noggins zapped got better at the game faster than those who received a much lower dosage of electricity. Using electricity to stimulate the brain isn’t that radical an idea — our brains work using electrochemical signals. But finding just the right amount of electricity and applying it to just the right spot to stimulate brain activity is a little more tricky. Suffice it to say, this isn’t the sort of experiment you should ever conduct yourself — the results could be disastrous.

It may be possible to boost our learning ability with the right application of electricity. Who knows? Maybe in a few years we really have literal thinking caps — powered by 9-volt batteries.

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