After publishing a 2014 study showing that noninvasive magnetic stimulation of the brain boosted people’s ability to remember an association between two items, Northwestern University neuroscientist Joel Voss began fielding a lot of questions from patients and their families. “We’re of course guarded in the publication talking about what we found—small but reliable increases in memory ability,” he says (Science, 345:1054–57). But some of the news coverage of that paper alluded to the procedure’s potential to treat Alzheimer’s disease and other memory-related disorders.
“I got calls—at least two a day for quite a long period of time—and emails: ‘My loved one is suffering from X, Y, or Z; thank God now you can cure it. How do we get to your lab?’” Voss says. He would have to explain to them that this was a scientific study, not an approved treatment. “There are a million steps between here and there, ...
