The other day my friend sent me an article about a mask that translates languages. Unfortunately, I had already written about this particular idea but there is a related idea that I can write about: a way to stimulate the inner ear nerve to help us learn foreign languages faster!
New Scientist explains:
“An in-ear device that stimulates a major nerve leading to the brain can help people learn unfamiliar sounds in a new language.
Vagus nerve stimulation has been used for more than 20 years to treat conditions like epilepsy, but it usually involves surgery to implant electrodes so they are directly in contact with the nerve in the neck. [However], Matthew Leonard at the University of California, San Francisco, and his colleagues have developed an earbud-like electrode that can stimulate the part of the vagus nerve that extends into the ear without the need for an implant.
Leonard and his team tested their in-ear device in 36 English-speaking volunteers, stimulating their nerves at various times while they performed a task that required them to identify sounds in Mandarin Chinese – a language they were unfamiliar with. Because the nerve stimulation is imperceptible, the volunteers didn’t know whether or when they received it. Twelve of the volunteers didn’t receive any nerve stimulation at all.
The researchers found that they could enhance learning by synchronizing the nerve stimulation with the presentation of Mandarin speech sounds. ‘I was quite shocked that just a small amount of stimulation over a very short time period gave us a relatively large bump in learning,’ says Leonard.
The participants who received nerve stimulation were 13 per cent better, on average, at classifying tones in Mandarin and achieved peak performance twice as quickly as those who wore the device but didn’t receive stimulation.
‘We think that vagus nerve stimulation may enhance learning by helping individuals pay attention to the right things during the learning process,’ says Leonard. Although it was only tested with tones from Mandarin, Leonard says that in principle this could be applied to any language.”
Personally, I love this idea because it reminds me of one of my all-time favorite ideas: high inducing headphones. Here’s what I previously had to say about them:
“Welcome to a world where people get high not from narcotics or hallucinogenics but from music. That’s right. There are now headphones that stimulate the brain’s release of dopamine giving you a natural high while you rock out to your favorite beats. In fact, the stimulating of the dopamine is designed to happen in conjunction with the beat.
Science Alert explains how this amazing feat works:
‘The headphones will pump music into your ears as normal, but at the same time, an integrated device will deliver a low-power electrical signal through your ear canal to stimulate the Vagus nerve – a nerve that runs from the brain stem to the abdomen and plays a role in the release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that helps control the brain’s reward and pleasure centers.’
Those who have tested the headphones claim that they have experienced an extreme high that would register as a 10 on a scale of 10. Better yet, the effects even linger for up to an hour.”
All in all, both the High Inducing Headphones and the Vagus Nerve Stimulator show just how important the Vagus nerve is in regards to helping us reach our full potential. Which begs the question: what else can it be used for?!
Is a Vagus Nerve Stimulator the Greatest Idea Ever?
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