For the first time, scientists have managed to use non-invasive electrical stimulation to boost people's creativity by an average of 7.4 percent. This is the first evidence that brain stimulation can trigger specific behavioural changes, and suggests that the same method could be used to treat depression.

Publishing their results in the journal Cortex, a team from the University of North Carolina in the US used a low dose of electrical current to enhance brain waves called alpha oscillations, which naturally occur when someone is day-dreaming. Creativity was then assessed using a well-validated and common test called the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking, where participants are given a small fragment of an illustration and asked complete it (think a more scientific Mr Squiggle). But making us better versions of ourselves isn't the end goal of this research.