Investigating non-invasive neurostimulation alongside language instruction and therapy.

Our devices deliver a small electrical current, roughly the strength of a hearing-aid battery, through two electrodes on the scalp. It isn't strong enough to fire neurons on its own. The tES literature describes the effect as lowering the threshold for firing: the region under the electrode appears to become a little more responsive to whatever it's already trying to do.

Which is why the instruction matters more than the device. We pair the current with active practice (sounding out words, learning new vocabulary) so that the circuits doing that work are engaged at the moment of stimulation. Whether that pairing translates into faster learning, and by how much, is the question each pilot is designed to answer. Stimulation on its own doesn't teach anyone anything.

Different jobs, different targets. For reading and phonics, we target several regions in the system that turns letters into sounds, the network a struggling reader leans on when they meet an unfamiliar word. For language learning, Broca's and Wernicke's areas, the brain's talker and its listener.