Seven sessions of brain stimulation seemed to cut missed tasks more than fake stimulation
Who it’s about: Adults
- Helped
Real brain stimulation left fewer tasks undone than fake stimulation, but the gap looked too big to trust.
Small randomised trial of 46 adults in China who often put things off · vs fake stimulation on the same schedule · they rated themselves · ⚠ results look too good to be true; numbers unreliable; summary claims more than the results show
The study
Who took part
46 adults in China who scored very high on a questionnaire about putting things off, picked from 1,682 people screened. 53 started, 7 dropped out, and each group had 3 men and 20 women.
What they did
One group had a weak electric current sent through the scalp to the front left of the brain. Each session lasted 20 minutes, every two days, seven times across 15 days. The other group had the same set-up, but the current ran only for the first and last 30 seconds. Before each session, people named a real task due the next day and later said how much they finished, with proof.
What happened
At the start, 16 of 23 people in each group left tasks unfinished. After the last session this fell to none of 23 with real stimulation, against 13 of 23 with fake stimulation. Six months later the real group still left fewer of their tasks unfinished. The effects look far too large for so few people. Some of the paper's numbers also don't match, so a new study needs to check them.
Source
Modulating task-outcome value to mitigate real-world procrastination via noninvasive brain stimulation (2026)
DOI: 10.7554/elife.108241.2.sa3 (opens in a new tab)
