Those of you who are lousy at math may someday be able to boost your skills with the use of a painless method of electrical brain stimulation, British research suggests. In a study published in the Nov. 4 online issue of Current Biology , neuroscientists at Oxford University report that adults with normal math abilities were able to improve their performance on a series of numerical tests with the help of a noninvasive technique known as transcranial direct current stimulation (TDCS). TDCS involves stimulating specific regions of the brain with low-level electrical currents to enhance or reduce the activity of neurons. 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 . But this is the first study to show that TDCS can help healthy individuals do better on math tests. “We were able to enhance math abilities, in a specific fashion, and with remarkable longevity,” said lead author Roi Cohen Kadosh, a cognitive neuroscientist at Oxford’s department of experimental psychology. For the study, Cohen Kadosh and his colleagues studied 15 student volunteers between the ages of 20 and 21. The students were asked to learn a series of artificial numbers (symbols that they had never seen before that they were told represented numbers) while they received either a placebo stimulation or TDCS applied to the parietal lobe, a region situated at the back of the brain that is key to numerical understanding. “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,” Cohen Kadosh explained. His team tested the participants’ ability to automatically process the relationship of the artificial numbers to one another and to map them correctly in space using standard testing methods for numerical competence. The results of the tests showed that the brain stimulation improved the participants’ ability to learn the new numbers, and those that improvements lasted for six months. Control tests showed that the effect was specific to the learned symbols and did not affect other cognitive functions. One American researcher said the findings were encouraging, but a lot more study is needed. “Like many good studies, it opens a raft of fertile questions, including ‘Will this work in children?’ and ‘Is it safe to use in children?’” said Dr. Edwin M. Robertson, associate director of the Berenson-Allen Center for Noninvasive Brain Stimulation at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. “It is certainly possible that undergoing this procedure will affect brain function in children and so cause either neurological or psychiatric problems in the future, and so good follow-up studies are required to examine this issue,” said Robertson, who is also an assistant professor of neurology at Harvard University Medical School. “The concern is greater for children whose brains are still developing, as opposed to the adult population of volunteers who took part in the current study.” 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. “Our aim is to try to find a way to enhance cognitive treatment by coupling it with noninvasive and painless brain stimulation,” he said. He acknowledged, however, that the technique may also end up being sought after by zealous parents eager to have their kids improve their math scores. “It’s just like other innovations in the past that have been misused,” said Cohen Kadosh. “The experiments that we are doing have been designed to improve disabilities, but of course it can be used by others to enhance average math performance, and we don’t have any control over that.”

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Expo Hall at the 62nd annual NAFSA: Association of International Educators conference evokes Disney’s Epcot Center. Foreign countries have staked out territory here in America’s heartland to promote themselves as destinations for international students: Study in Japan , Malaysia , Korea ; “Study in the heart of Europe !” (in Belgium ). Over in Canadian country, signs prompt passersby to “Imagine studying” — “?tudier en” — British Columbia , Ontario , Saskatchewan …. Quebec ‘s universities have a separate booth nearby: “A unique crossroads.” The international student market is booming. Foreign student enrollment in the United States is at a record high of 671,616 students. Worldwide, upwards of 3 million students now study outside their home countries, an expanding pie that every country wants a piece of. “As the pie’s increased, more countries are hosting more international students,” Robert Guttierez, senior manager for research and evaluation for the New York-based Institute of International Education , said during a session Tuesday on trends in global student mobility. “So actually the relative share, if you want to call it that, of the United States has dipped from 28 to 21% [from 2001 to 2008], though we host the largest number of international students worldwide, followed by the U.K., France, Germany, and Australia .” Among the countries clamoring to increase their share, China hopes to play host to 300,000 international students by 2020; its current enrollment, per the Institute on International Education’s Atlas of International Student Mobility, is 195,000. Japan, too, has a target of 300,000; it’s at 123,000. “We’ve also seen increased competition, from the U.S., from the U.K and from Canada,” Jen Nielson, manager of education for Australian Education International, said during the session. “Canada has told us that they want to overtake Australia as the third-most popular English-speaking destination. They’ve been really ramping up in certain markets. But also I think [we're facing competition] from more nontraditional competitors, like Singapore, for example, which has positioned itself in the Asia-Pacific region as a hub for attracting international students.” U.S. COMMUNITY COLLEGES: Strive to boost study abroad OPEN DOORS: More U.S. students studying abroad and vice versa Q&A: How to raise ‘global students’ International student inflows and outflows are complex. Students from different countries tend to go to different countries for different reasons. Australia’s largest source country for international students is China, and 40% of Chinese students in Australia are undergraduates, the most popular major being business. Australia’s second-largest source of international students is India, and about two-thirds of Indian students in Australia are in the vocational education sector; the most popular degree is in hospitality management. In the United States, by contrast, Indian students are concentrated at the graduate level, in engineering, computer science, management and business programs, and they are mainly clustered geographically in five states — California, Florida, Massachusetts , Texas and New York , said Rahul Choudaha, associate development of director and innovation for World Education Services, during a session on international student mobility. India sends more foreign students to the United States than any other country, and Choudaha doesn’t expect the numbers to drop any time soon. INTERNATIONAL RECRUITERS: Ethical debates remain as practice grows INSIDE HIGHER ED: EU business schools look for U.S. respect, market ON THE WEB: Entangling alliances between British recruiters, U.S. college Although India has rapidly been building up its own higher education system — enrollment in Indian engineering programs grew from 115,000 to 653,000 between 1997 and 2007, for example — the expansion, he said, has come at the expense of quality. Much of the growth has been among poor or average-quality institutions, which he called the “laggards” (as opposed to the “achievers” and the “aspirers”). (“Maybe,” he said, laughing, during a follow-up interview, “I should be more politically correct.” He cautioned, too, that he was speaking of the quality of the institutions and not of the students they attract.) The whole point is that, while the system is developing, there aren’t yet enough high-quality Indian institutions for high-quality students to attend. This being the case, Choudaha said, “I believe that the demand for international education will remain very high.” In Latin America, demand for international education is very low, as is supply: “Mobility to and from Latin America is unfortunately very low, and not only is it low, it’s uneven,” said Thomas Buntru, director of international programs for the Universidad de Monterrey and president of the Mexican Association for International Education. Just 0.17% of students in Latin American universities are of foreign nationality, and just 0.87% of Latin American students study abroad. Most exchange that does happen involves the United States (65%) and Europe (21%), followed by Asia (8%), Oceania (3%) and Africa (3%). Buntru cited a number of limiting factors, among them low academic reputations of Latin American universities (as measured, for instance, in international rankings), insufficient course offerings in foreign languages, especially English, and financial constraints, as most countries in the region have either developing or emerging economies. All that said, Buntro said he was cautiously optimistic about the potential for growth, in part because of the growing importance of Spanish as an international language. Back in the Expo Hall, countries and colleges promoted themselves, as did a wide range of for-profit companies that have developed to support study abroad and international student recruitment and services: credential evaluators, insurance companies (Cultural Insurance Services International: “You can’t imagine what kind of trouble your students can get into”), study abroad providers, testing companies, and recruitment agencies (the use of agents in recruiting in international students to the United States is on the rise). At the very back of the expo hall were the hometown institutions — Kansas State and Park Universities, the University of Missouri at Kansas City and the Study Missouri Consortium all have booths. Of the 671,616 foreign students studying in the United States in 2008-9, 11,285 came to Missouri, and 8,668 to Kansas.