Wave of the Future: Using Brain Stimulation to Boost Employee Training

Stanley B. Prusiner once said that neuroscience is the most exciting branch of science because the brain is the most fascinating object in the universe, with every brain being different and each one defining who a person is. That idea sits at the center of neuroleadership, a field that keeps picking up speed as more of the workforce pays attention to it. The term itself came from Dr. David Rock. Given how fast the training methods and the technology behind them are moving, there's a real possibility that the way companies train people a decade from now will barely resemble what we recognize today.

So what might that future look like? Research on learning and memory points toward a particular tool: pulsed, non-invasive transcranial stimulation, often written as tDCS and sometimes called brain stimulation or deep brain stimulation. The basic idea is retraining the brain using electro-magnetic pulses.

Here is roughly how the procedure goes. Electrodes get placed on specific spots along the head and forehead, chosen because they sit over regions tied to particular functions and activities. Low, steady pulses of electrical current then pass through those electrodes into the brain tissue. When the current alternates in this way, the method is called transcranial alternating current stimulation, or tACS. Because nothing penetrates the skull, the technique is considered non-invasive and carries little to no lasting side effect, which is part of why it fits a workplace setting at all.

None of this is as new as the high-tech framing suggests. Variations of brain stimulation have been around for decades, just applied to medicine rather than to job performance. Clinicians have used it in limited cases to help with conditions including depression, anxiety, strokes, headaches, joint and chronic pain, dementia, muscular disorders, and epilepsy (Nauert, 2017).

Dr. Shapour Jaberzadeh and his colleagues in the Department of Physiotherapy at Monash University took the approach somewhere else. They worked up a newer version of the stimulation technique aimed at territory outside standard medicine: learning, memory, and the training of employees (Nauert, 2017). In other words, the raw material of neuroleadership.

Across a run of studies, the team found that this fairly obscure method could speed up how fast the brain takes on new material and new tasks. Students, or employees, were able to pick up new skills both faster and more accurately, which translated into higher productivity in the classroom or on the job. The trick turned out to involve limiting how much continuous stimulation the brain received, cycling it through 'on' and 'off' periods rather than leaving it running (Nauert, 2017).

The intervals between pulses mattered too. Jaberzadeh's group reported that gaps between bursts of electrical energy produced measurable changes in the brain, and that shorter gaps between pulses led to greater brain excitability, meaning more brain activity (Nauert, 2017).

There was earlier animal work pointing the same direction. In 2011, researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas measured how brain stimulation affected learning in rats. The stimulated animals completed tasks both faster and more accurately after the procedure. What stood out was that even once their brain responses drifted back to the pre-stimulation baseline, the rats still performed the tasks they had learned. The authors suggested the same acceleration of learning and task acquisition might carry over to people (Science Daily, 2011).

Human testing followed. In a study led by Sandia, participants spent 30 minutes playing either verbal or spatial memory training games while stimulation was applied to the left or right forehead, the regions tied to learning, memory, and reasoning. The right hemisphere handles spatial tasks and the left handles verbal ones (DOE/Sandia National Laboratories, 2017).

The researchers expected a clean split. People stimulated on the right while drilling spatial, reasoning-type tasks should do better on the spatial test but not necessarily the verbal one, and people stimulated on the left while drilling verbal tasks should improve on verbal but not spatial.

The results were messier and more interesting. The right-side spatial group improved on the spatial reasoning test and on the verbal test. The left-side spatial group showed no real gain on the spatial test. The left-side verbal group improved only on verbal. The researchers explained it by noting that the right hemisphere governs not only reasoning but strategy, so stimulating that region during a verbal task let participants carry strategy skills across to both kinds of tests (DOE/Sandia National Laboratories, 2017).

Put all of this inside a company and the appeal to employees, managers, and the organization becomes clear. As firms invest more in employee satisfaction, some sectors are likely to reach for brain stimulation to strengthen training programs, surface where each person is strong or weak, and lift productivity, which feeds revenue.

How would it actually operate day to day? For individual employees, brain mapping paired with stimulation could help work out which tasks and roles suit them, then point them toward careers that make full use of their abilities.

Training is where it could earn its keep. Stimulation could help new hires absorb their responsibilities and help veterans refresh old skills or pick up new ones. Managers would benefit too, since mapping would let them spot an employee's strengths and gaps and assign work accordingly. A manager could use the results to play to someone's strengths, steer them toward areas that need work, and send anyone who needs extra instruction back through training and retesting. Better training plus stimulation, the argument goes, shows up later as higher profit. At bottom it amounts to retraining the brain so people learn faster and retain more, a setup that could pay off for everyone involved. The sticking point is getting companies to commit the time and money needed to prove it out across an industry.

Until stimulation itself becomes standard, there's a stripped-down version companies can run right now: keep the concept, drop the electrodes. That means leaning on memory and learning games as a lead-in to training, building an interactive program that teaches specific skills through gameplay (on a computer or off it), and then measuring those skills through observation, tests, or computerized games tuned to the job in question.

A practical rollout might start with memory training, where employees work through learning games matched to the skills the job demands. The selection matters here, since the games should target the brain functions that line up with what the role actually requires. From there the program would move into a classroom-style neuroleadership component, the psycho-education piece that rounds out the training.