U.S. military scientists conducted successful tests using electrical brain stimulators to enhance the mental skills of soldiers, opening a future avenue that might lead to the development of what some military analysts are calling "American Supersoldiers."

Successful tests at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio used electrical brain stimulators to augment and enhance multitasking capability in test participants.

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In their published study, researchers noted that various Air Force operations such as remotely piloted and manned aircraft operations require a human operator to monitor and respond to multiple events simultaneously over a long period of time.

"With the monotonous nature of these tasks, the operator's performance may decline shortly after their work shift commences," said the study. Brain stimulation might be an answer to this problem.

The team used a test developed by NASA to assess each of the 20 participants involved in the test. These people were asked to keep a crosshair inside a moving circle on a computer screen, while constantly monitoring and responding to three other tasks on the screen.

Half of the volunteers had a constant two milliamp current beamed into the brain for the duration of the 36 minute-long test. The other half formed a control group that only received 30 seconds of stimulation at the start of the test.

Researchers were astounded to find those that had the treatment began to perform better than the control group just four minutes into the test. 

"The findings provided new evidence that tDCS (Transcranial direct-current stimulation) has the ability to augment and enhance multitasking capability in a human operator. Future research should be conducted to determine the longevity of the enhancement of transcranial direct current stimulation on multitasking performance, which has yet to be accomplished," said the study.

Although electrical brain stimulation appears to have no harmful side effects, its long-term safety is unknown.

The brain stimulation kits in the study used five electrodes to send weak electric currents through the skull and into specific parts of the cortex.

"We don't know how the stimulation of one brain region affects the surrounding, unstimulated regions," said Roy Hamilton, MD, MS, an assistant professor of Neurology and director of the Laboratory for Cognition and Neural Stimulation at University of Pennsylvania.

'Stimulating one region could improve one's ability to perform one task but hurt the ability to perform another.'

The Pentagon believes the research might lead to treatments for drone operators, air crews and others subject to excessive mental stress in their demanding roles.

Tagselectrical brain stimulators, NASA, U.S. Air Force, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Transcranial direct-current stimulation