The Independent has claimed that if a magnet is applied in the brain of an Alzheimer patient the patient would understand what is being said.

The news is on the basis of an experiment done with a magnetic therapy called rTMS which according to some can reorganize the brain cells and improve neurological functions Five patients have been administered that rTMS therapy over four weeks time and five other patients were given two weeks of sham treatment followed by two weeks of real RTMS treatment The rTMS were applied in the areas of brains which is involved in speech and communication which gets impaired by Alzheimer.

After two weeks time those who were treated with only rTMS showed improvements in comprehending sentences. The patients treated with sham did not show any improvement. But when the sham groups were treated withrTMs they also showed improvement.

The technique did not improve any other language abilities such as talking cognitive function or memory. The therapy fails to tell about the long term effects and harm that it may cause. The use of rTMS in cases of dementia will be of interest to neuro scientists but still it can be considered as an experimental technique until larger, longer-term studies can evaluate it.

The study was carried out by researcher’s fromIRCCS. and other research institutes and educational institutes in Italy.

This research was supported by the Italian Ministry of Health and (AFaR) research foundation’

This was a randomly controlled trial in which 10 patients with moderately severe Alzheimer disease were assigned randomly. They were either given magnetic stimulation therapy or a placebo treatment and shorter course of this magnetic therapy.

The result evolved showed that the patient who had undergone the therapy scored 66% on the sentence comprehension test.