But that skep­ti­cism has only inspired Pavel and his col­leagues, including asso­ciate pro­fessor of 
elec­trical and com­puter engi­neering Deniz Erdogmus, to work even harder on a project aimed
 at exploring their inno­v­a­tive research. They recently received a con­tract to study the
 phe­nom­enon from the Strength­ening Human Adap­tive Rea­soning and Problem-​​solving Pro­gram, known as SHARP. The pro­gram is spon­sored by the Intel­li­gence Advanced Research Projects
 Activity, a gov­ern­ment agency that invests in high-​​risk, high-​​payoff research.

Researchers at Oxford Uni­ver­sity, who are part of the same SHARP team as Erdogmus and 
Pavel, pre­vi­ously demon­strated that applying tran­scra­nial cur­rent stim­u­la­tion helps chil­dren 
per­form better on math­e­matics prob­lems. “The ques­tion is how well does this method work for 
improving fluid intel­li­gence,” said Pavel, who holds joint appoint­ments in the Col­lege of 
Com­puter and Infor­ma­tion Sci­ence and the Bouvé Col­lege of Health Sci­ence.

via Can current stimulate smarts? | news @ Northeastern.