A team of resear-chers from the US National Institutes of Health says that connecting a battery across the front of the head can boost verbal skills.

According to data presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, held in San Diego, current of two thousandths of an ampere appli-ed for 20 minutes is enough to improve verbal skills.

Meenakshi Iyer of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Maryland, ran the current through 103 volunteers. "I had to explain it in detail to the first one or two subjects," Iyer said.

The volunteers were asked to name as many words as possible beginning with a particular letter, and in 90 seconds, most people got around 20 words. But when Iyer administered the current, her volunteers were able to name around 20 per cent more words than controls, who had the electrodes attached but no current delivered.

Iyer's group, which is led by Eric Wassermann, was prompted to run the tests after considering problems facing researchers who were studying the effect of magnetic fields on the brain, and she is now hopeful that low electric currents will offer a safer and more portable alternative.

Therefore, after running further safety tests, Iyer plans to test the effect of the current on patients with frontal temporal dementia, a brain disease that causes speech problems. "This won't be a cure. But it could be used in addition to drugs," she said.

Meanwhile, another study ha suggested that yoghurts and fruit drinks which are usually thought to be healthy for kids are largely useless, scientists have revealed.

The researchers at the Royal Free Hospital in London said that most of these products do not contain enough 'friendly' bacteria to be effective.