How zapping brain can cure writer’s block

STIMULATING the brain by zapping it with electricity could cure writer’s block and trigger creative thinking.

Scientists used a weak current to temporarily suppress part of the frontal brain involved in reasoning and found it gave volunteers an enhanced ability to ‘think outside the box’. They said it was because they were freed from mental assumptions learned from experience.

But they got worse at solving problems which made greater demands on their memory. The study, published in Scientific Reports, was carried out by researchers at Queen Mary and Goldsmiths, both University of London.