Whether learning a new piano piece or adapting your tennis serve, acquiring physical skills depends on your brain’s ability to strengthen and refine neural connections. Researchers are exploring whether this process can be accelerated with technology.

Scientists are particularly interested in the potential of non-invasive brain stimulation – a group of techniques that can alter brain activity without surgery.

Some deliver weak electrical currents to the brain through electrodes placed on the scalp. Others use magnetic fields or focused ultrasound waves. Although they work in different ways, they all aim to temporarily change the activity of neural circuits.

If these techniques can successfully enhance neuroplasticity – the brain’s ability to reorganise and form new connections during learning – then they could be of use anywhere where performance depends on learning complex movements, from sport and music to surgery and beyond. Researchers are also seeing if these technologies could help with learning non-physical skills, such as picking up a foreign language.

Technology that boosts people’s physical and mental abilities is no longer the preserve of science fiction. In this new series, we explore cutting-edge ways that human capabilities could be augmented both now and in the near future – and the ethics of these innovations.

Elite sport, professional gaming and high-performance workplaces could all become targets for........

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