Expand Working Memory – Your Brain’s Bandwidth

Working memory holds the contents of what we are paying attention to at any one time.  It is a small active memory store that provides the information we process when thinking, making decisions, solving problems and performing other cognitive tasks.   Working memory is like your conscious brain’s bandwidth, it is a measure of the amount of information that can be processed at any one time.  The more bandwidth the higher your cognitive performance.

Research has shown that simple training tasks can expand our working memory and increase fluid intelligence or our reasoning and problem solving capabilities.

The training, called the n-back technique, presents you with a series of sounds or pictures.   In the case where n = 2 you want to identify the sound or image that is just like the second one in the series. Once you master that you move up to n = 3 and identify the sound or image that is just like the third one in the series. As the value of n increases you must hold more and more information in your working memory. This exercises it like a muscle.

Doing n-back training for 20 minutes a day for 20 days produces a measurable improvement in reasoning and problem solving power.   And it seems the level of improvement you get increases with the amount of training you do.  According to research presented at the May 28th American Association for Psychological Science Meeting:

“These new studies demonstrate that the more training people have on the dual n-back task, the greater the improvement in fluid intelligence,” Jonides said.

They also found the effect works for children as well as adults and that single n-back training (focusing on the images OR the sounds) works as well as dual n-back training (focusing on the images AND the sounds).

N-back training is a perfect technique for a iPhone or mobile app. Unfortunately, I cannot find one.   To get the technique a try, go to this free web-based application. To dig a bit more you might want to try The Brain Workshop but you have to download software to your computer.

Interested to hear from readers that do n-back training.  What value of n have you reached? How has this type of training impacted your cognitive performance in everyday or professional tasks?

Source for Image: Working Memory