14 ms·

Training exercise boosts brain power, Johns Hopkins researchers say

baxtr 9y ago
Cool. Does anybody know an app where I can exercise like in the video?
- nkozyra 9y ago
  Found this, but I'm sure any N-back will work: http://brainscale.net/dual-n-back http://brainscale.net/dual-n-back Also, if you feel like working off of someone else's source: https://sourceforge.net/projects/brainworkshop/files/brainworkshop/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/brainworkshop/files/brainwo... Though it seems relatively simple to design.
- rajadigopula 9y ago
  Yes. Search for dual-n-back in app store. I can go till 6 back without much effort. It gets tougher after.
z0r 9y ago
paging gwern! * for context, he's got a lot on his site about n-back: https://www.gwern.net/DNB-FAQ https://www.gwern.net/DNB-FAQ https://www.gwern.net/DNB-meta-analysis https://www.gwern.net/DNB-meta-analysis
JamesBarney 9y ago
When the first studies by Jaeggie on IQ came out a few years ago I hit dual n back pretty hard trying to improve my IQ. I don't think I got any smarter, but I did notice a few things. Pros My attention got better, I was less easily distracted. My executive function was better, I made better choices in life.(less junk food, fewer beers) My thoughts slipped less often, I had those "what was I just talking about" moments less and less frequently. Cons Sometimes I felt overly focused for social situations. Like the feeling you get when you've been studying for 4 hours, and then try to the shoot the shit with someone, and you end up being too rigid/serious and instead of playful/fun.
- dibujante 9y ago
  Those are all indicators of intelligence. Whether you have good executive control due to some "intrinsic" intelligence or due to some conditioning, the net effect is the same.
  - SilasX 9y ago
    Not being sociable and fun at parties is a sign of intelligence? Charisma doesn't come from the liver. (believe that was Yudkowsky)
    - dibujante 9y ago
      Are you kidding? Did the "bright, socially awkward person" stereotype get put out to pasture while I wasn't looking?
      - SilasX 9y ago
        That's a folk stereotype, not a rigorous demonstration that "intelligence" (in the appropriate sense) must cause worse social interaction, as your comment would imply. Edit: To clarify, even accepting that (some narrow definition of) intelligence (associated with math) is anti-correlated with social skills, that wouldn't imply that someone who is already "good at parties" should worsen their social skills by improving their intelligence. Edit2: I agree that my earlier comment was poorly worded, and that, if you knew nothing else you should expect "conventionally smart" people to have less social skills. But that wouldn't seem to be relevant here, for the above reasons. And charismatic people are intelligent, in a sense.
        dibujante 9y ago
        Ah, well, I wasn't even trying to imply that anyways. I was looking at the pros: better attention, better executive control, better focus. Whether he's great at parties is totally beyond my comprehension.
gorpomon 9y ago
This is actually a really common improv warm up. The group that's about to perform circles up, and one person says a word to someone else in the circle. That second person then passes the word to someone else, and so on. Eventually, after around 50 words, someone spontaneously passes what was said to them back and you start trying to go back down. The benefits are many, everyone practices focusing, listening and trusting their teammates. It can also be funny, as near the bottom opinions on what the true order is can vary quite a bit.
- grandalf 9y ago
  We (my roommates and I) used to do this while tossing a frisbee in college. It’s amazing how we could do hundreds of associations and then go backwards without missing any.
- Kiro 9y ago
  I don't understand. Isn't it just the same word you started off with? Actually, I probably misunderstand since it sounds like the whisper game but with public passings which obviously would make no sense.
  - mohn 9y ago
    I haven't played this game myself, but from the description I suspect that "passes the word to someone else" should have been "comes up with and passes a different word to someone else". You end up with a stack of words where no two adjacent words are the same. Players might also try to avoid adding non-adjacent duplicate words to the stack. Eventually, someone decides it's time to start popping backward through the stack. They respond with the same word that they were just passed and the group tries to remember the right words to continue popping back down the stack, one person and word at a time. This gets harder "near the bottom" of the stack because it's been longer since those words were spoken.
    - dhimes 9y ago
      But this way you would only hear one word- the one that was passed to you. Unless it went through several rounds, in which case everybody would have their own stack.
flavio81 9y ago
When I see these exercises, I think it would be more fun to just play the drums to boost my brain. Here's an article collating studies on rhythm playing and brain effects: https://www.google.com.pe/amp/s/m.mic.com/articles/amp/89363/science-shows-how-drummers-brains-are-actually-different-from-everybody-elses https://www.google.com.pe/amp/s/m.mic.com/articles/amp/89363... (i do play drums, synth, and guitar.)
- jasonkostempski 9y ago
  I don't think the same parts of the brain are used. I can play Simon pretty well but the short examples given in the video were mentally taxing for me. With drumming, in what situation would you need to remember the nth last drum you hit and what would the second variable be? And who's gonna tell you if you got it right or wrong?
  - flavio81 9y ago
    >With drumming Drumming, in a band context, is all about remembering certain drum patters, combinating them mentally so they fit the music as well as possible, and then playing them with perfect timing... ... all of this in real time, and as an endless while(song is not over) loop!! >And who's gonna tell you if you got it right or wrong? You don't want to make the bassist, the singer, the guitar player, and the keyboard player all get angry at you at the same time for making the group sound bad!
Bartweiss 9y ago
This is interesting, and kind of odd. The article claims the failure of previous brain-training studies came from choosing the wrong techniques, but the evidence on dual n-back specifically has been conflicted for quite a while; this isn't the first study on it. What's interesting here is that a lot of the best results on dual n-back in the past have concluded that it's mostly promising to fight cognitive decline or boost recovery. Previous work on boosting memory in young, mentally-healthy people has come up with basically nothing. I'm hoping that this is the better and more-powerful study, and that n-back does boost general working memory. But the cynic in me is wondering if the chosen working-memory metric was simply more vulnerable to training effects from n-back than from complex span. https://www.gwern.net/DNB-meta-analysis https://www.gwern.net/DNB-meta-analysis
- DigitalJack 9y ago
  I thought the unique aspect here was comparing techniques against each other. Not that the techniques hadn't been studied. It didn't seem like a great distinction to me, but maybe it eliminates control issues when comparing two studies of different techniques vs comparing two different techniques in one study.
  - Bartweiss 9y ago
    Yeah, I think the head-to-head between techniques is what's novel about the paper. But what confused me is that they got a strong positive off dual n-back in the first place; other studies of that exact technique have regularly come up ambiguous-to-negative.
    - JamesBarney 9y ago
      The studies on Dual-N-Back increasing IQ have been all over the place. Some positive some negative. With the larger more careful trials coming up negative. But IQ isn't working memory, attention, or executive function. And the findings on Dual-N-Back and working memory are less ambiguous and more positive. Also there have been some more interesting studies done on Dual-N-Back in terms of changing Type 1 dopamine receptor density, as well as volume changes in certain parts of the pre-frontal cortex. So it really does seem like it's doing something even if that doesn't translate into an IQ change.
pdog 9y ago
Do you know the best exercise for your brain? Actual exercise. Running increases neurogenesis[1] more than anything else. [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/04/well/move/for-your-brains-sake-keep-moving.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/04/well/move/for-your-brains...
- taeric 9y ago
  Amusingly, I would not be surprised to find some people need both. In particular, exercise is boring. Very very boring. Anything that can help with concentration during boring tasks is useful. Obviously, that is my experience. Ymmv
  - mpweiher 9y ago
    > exercise is boring Yep. So listen to podcasts during. Seminars About Long Term Thinking and In Our Time being my favorites.
  - tgb 9y ago
    I used to think that running was boring and that I'd do more of it if it were less boring. At the time I was running on a treadmill while watching a TV show. But every time I hit the end of my run and went into the 5 minute cooldown, I'd find myself becoming engrossed in the show and not want to end. The difference? I wasn't exercising as hard any more. I was getting tired, not bored. Now I run outside for sometimes five times as long as I was running back then, without podcasts or TV shows, and I never get bored. I do run slower, though. Try going slower next time! And going outside in a straight line or long loop. I get very bored/frustrated if I have to do laps to make my distance. Of course YMMV too.
    - noir_lord 9y ago
      That's why I love cycling on a road bike, at a steady 17mph it's rarely boring because the scenery changes quickly, I used to run but since I don't drive it was largely the same places over and over.
    - mamon 9y ago
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
thatonechad 9y ago
Is there any online game for this like shown in the video?
- vixen99 9y ago
  http://brainscale.net/dual-n-back http://brainscale.net/dual-n-back
AlmightyGrant 9y ago
Did you know that reading on the internet trains your brain to be smarter?? This article is trash.
- djohnston 9y ago
  that's not what the research (or the article) was saying.
racer-v 9y ago
The training exercise is Dual N-Back https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-back#Dual_n-back https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-back#Dual_n-back
wodenokoto 9y ago
Did subjects improve their dual-n-back scores significantly during the exercise regiment? Did they improve on other memory tests? Did they improve in learning tasks? I get that they got increased brain activity in areas associated with learning and memory, but I'd like to see subjects also improve when directly tested.
excalibur 9y ago
The first few paragraphs of this article read exactly like spam email. It gets better as it goes, but I still wouldn't trust any links in it.
heyheyhey 9y ago
Anyone have tricks to boost their memory? Lately, I've felt my memory has been a little off. I feel like I'm not remembering things I would normally easily remember. Like the other day, I was trying to remember what they speak in Iran (Farsi) or who the head coach of the Boston Celtics or what was the name of the Scorsese movie with Wahlberg/Damon/Nicholson. These are all subjects I'm very familiar with so it bothered me that I couldn't remember the answers immediately.
- troupe 9y ago
  Make sure you are getting enough sleep and at least some exercise.
garuuk 9y ago
I don't know where the articles source is but this linked study says there are no improved affects with with dual n back training. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4820261/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4820261/ This meta analysis says there's a small affect https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13423-014-0699-x https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13423-014-0699-x
Vernetit 9y ago
I think that the changes of n-back comes with a 30 day training 20 - 30 minutes a day. I create a Melody position n-back Link: http://competicionmental.appspot.com/router?page=melodynback3 http://competicionmental.appspot.com/router?page=melodynback...
jonbarker 9y ago
Wasn't the issue with n-back previously that the Jaeggi study was not replicable?
briandw 9y ago
I'll make a shameless plug for my side project, IQ boost. The first Dual N-Back iPhone app. I launched it about 2 weeks after the app store opened. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/iq-boost/id286574399?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/iq-boost/id286574399?mt=8
defined 9y ago
I may have missed seeing a mention of the work done by Dr. Michael Merzenich[1], professor emeritus at UCSF and an expert on neuroplasticity, who has been showing for many years that mental (and physical) exercises can and do remap parts of the brain to our benefit. His 2004 TED Talk[2] on neuroplasticity is IMHO well worth watching. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Merzenich https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Merzenich [2]: https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_merzenich_on_the_elastic_brain?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_merzenich_on_the_elastic_b...
fazelesswhite 9y ago
Created a very simple game out of this, http://memoryhip.ml/ http://memoryhip.ml/, have fun improving your memory guys :)

Cool. Does anybody know an app where I can exercise like in the video?

nkozyra 9y ago
Found this, but I'm sure any N-back will work: http://brainscale.net/dual-n-back http://brainscale.net/dual-n-back Also, if you feel like working off of someone else's source: https://sourceforge.net/projects/brainworkshop/files/brainworkshop/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/brainworkshop/files/brainwo... Though it seems relatively simple to design.
rajadigopula 9y ago
Yes. Search for dual-n-back in app store. I can go till 6 back without much effort. It gets tougher after.

z0r 9y ago

paging gwern! * for context, he's got a lot on his site about n-back: https://www.gwern.net/DNB-FAQ https://www.gwern.net/DNB-FAQ https://www.gwern.net/DNB-meta-analysis https://www.gwern.net/DNB-meta-analysis

JamesBarney 9y ago

When the first studies by Jaeggie on IQ came out a few years ago I hit dual n back pretty hard trying to improve my IQ. I don't think I got any smarter, but I did notice a few things. Pros My attention got better, I was less easily distracted. My executive function was better, I made better choices in life.(less junk food, fewer beers) My thoughts slipped less often, I had those "what was I just talking about" moments less and less frequently. Cons Sometimes I felt overly focused for social situations. Like the feeling you get when you've been studying for 4 hours, and then try to the shoot the shit with someone, and you end up being too rigid/serious and instead of playful/fun.

dibujante 9y ago
Those are all indicators of intelligence. Whether you have good executive control due to some "intrinsic" intelligence or due to some conditioning, the net effect is the same.
- SilasX 9y ago
  Not being sociable and fun at parties is a sign of intelligence? Charisma doesn't come from the liver. (believe that was Yudkowsky)
  - dibujante 9y ago
    Are you kidding? Did the "bright, socially awkward person" stereotype get put out to pasture while I wasn't looking?
    - SilasX 9y ago
      That's a folk stereotype, not a rigorous demonstration that "intelligence" (in the appropriate sense) must cause worse social interaction, as your comment would imply. Edit: To clarify, even accepting that (some narrow definition of) intelligence (associated with math) is anti-correlated with social skills, that wouldn't imply that someone who is already "good at parties" should worsen their social skills by improving their intelligence. Edit2: I agree that my earlier comment was poorly worded, and that, if you knew nothing else you should expect "conventionally smart" people to have less social skills. But that wouldn't seem to be relevant here, for the above reasons. And charismatic people are intelligent, in a sense.
      - dibujante 9y ago
        Ah, well, I wasn't even trying to imply that anyways. I was looking at the pros: better attention, better executive control, better focus. Whether he's great at parties is totally beyond my comprehension.

gorpomon 9y ago

This is actually a really common improv warm up. The group that's about to perform circles up, and one person says a word to someone else in the circle. That second person then passes the word to someone else, and so on. Eventually, after around 50 words, someone spontaneously passes what was said to them back and you start trying to go back down. The benefits are many, everyone practices focusing, listening and trusting their teammates. It can also be funny, as near the bottom opinions on what the true order is can vary quite a bit.

grandalf 9y ago
We (my roommates and I) used to do this while tossing a frisbee in college. It’s amazing how we could do hundreds of associations and then go backwards without missing any.
Kiro 9y ago
I don't understand. Isn't it just the same word you started off with? Actually, I probably misunderstand since it sounds like the whisper game but with public passings which obviously would make no sense.
- mohn 9y ago
  I haven't played this game myself, but from the description I suspect that "passes the word to someone else" should have been "comes up with and passes a different word to someone else". You end up with a stack of words where no two adjacent words are the same. Players might also try to avoid adding non-adjacent duplicate words to the stack. Eventually, someone decides it's time to start popping backward through the stack. They respond with the same word that they were just passed and the group tries to remember the right words to continue popping back down the stack, one person and word at a time. This gets harder "near the bottom" of the stack because it's been longer since those words were spoken.
  - dhimes 9y ago
    But this way you would only hear one word- the one that was passed to you. Unless it went through several rounds, in which case everybody would have their own stack.

flavio81 9y ago

When I see these exercises, I think it would be more fun to just play the drums to boost my brain. Here's an article collating studies on rhythm playing and brain effects: https://www.google.com.pe/amp/s/m.mic.com/articles/amp/89363/science-shows-how-drummers-brains-are-actually-different-from-everybody-elses https://www.google.com.pe/amp/s/m.mic.com/articles/amp/89363... (i do play drums, synth, and guitar.)

jasonkostempski 9y ago
I don't think the same parts of the brain are used. I can play Simon pretty well but the short examples given in the video were mentally taxing for me. With drumming, in what situation would you need to remember the nth last drum you hit and what would the second variable be? And who's gonna tell you if you got it right or wrong?
- flavio81 9y ago
  >With drumming Drumming, in a band context, is all about remembering certain drum patters, combinating them mentally so they fit the music as well as possible, and then playing them with perfect timing... ... all of this in real time, and as an endless while(song is not over) loop!! >And who's gonna tell you if you got it right or wrong? You don't want to make the bassist, the singer, the guitar player, and the keyboard player all get angry at you at the same time for making the group sound bad!

Bartweiss 9y ago

This is interesting, and kind of odd. The article claims the failure of previous brain-training studies came from choosing the wrong techniques, but the evidence on dual n-back specifically has been conflicted for quite a while; this isn't the first study on it. What's interesting here is that a lot of the best results on dual n-back in the past have concluded that it's mostly promising to fight cognitive decline or boost recovery. Previous work on boosting memory in young, mentally-healthy people has come up with basically nothing. I'm hoping that this is the better and more-powerful study, and that n-back does boost general working memory. But the cynic in me is wondering if the chosen working-memory metric was simply more vulnerable to training effects from n-back than from complex span. https://www.gwern.net/DNB-meta-analysis https://www.gwern.net/DNB-meta-analysis

DigitalJack 9y ago
I thought the unique aspect here was comparing techniques against each other. Not that the techniques hadn't been studied. It didn't seem like a great distinction to me, but maybe it eliminates control issues when comparing two studies of different techniques vs comparing two different techniques in one study.
- Bartweiss 9y ago
  Yeah, I think the head-to-head between techniques is what's novel about the paper. But what confused me is that they got a strong positive off dual n-back in the first place; other studies of that exact technique have regularly come up ambiguous-to-negative.
  - JamesBarney 9y ago
    The studies on Dual-N-Back increasing IQ have been all over the place. Some positive some negative. With the larger more careful trials coming up negative. But IQ isn't working memory, attention, or executive function. And the findings on Dual-N-Back and working memory are less ambiguous and more positive. Also there have been some more interesting studies done on Dual-N-Back in terms of changing Type 1 dopamine receptor density, as well as volume changes in certain parts of the pre-frontal cortex. So it really does seem like it's doing something even if that doesn't translate into an IQ change.

pdog 9y ago

Do you know the best exercise for your brain? Actual exercise. Running increases neurogenesis[1] more than anything else. [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/04/well/move/for-your-brains-sake-keep-moving.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/04/well/move/for-your-brains...

taeric 9y ago
Amusingly, I would not be surprised to find some people need both. In particular, exercise is boring. Very very boring. Anything that can help with concentration during boring tasks is useful. Obviously, that is my experience. Ymmv
- mpweiher 9y ago
  > exercise is boring Yep. So listen to podcasts during. Seminars About Long Term Thinking and In Our Time being my favorites.
- tgb 9y ago
  I used to think that running was boring and that I'd do more of it if it were less boring. At the time I was running on a treadmill while watching a TV show. But every time I hit the end of my run and went into the 5 minute cooldown, I'd find myself becoming engrossed in the show and not want to end. The difference? I wasn't exercising as hard any more. I was getting tired, not bored. Now I run outside for sometimes five times as long as I was running back then, without podcasts or TV shows, and I never get bored. I do run slower, though. Try going slower next time! And going outside in a straight line or long loop. I get very bored/frustrated if I have to do laps to make my distance. Of course YMMV too.
  - noir_lord 9y ago
    That's why I love cycling on a road bike, at a steady 17mph it's rarely boring because the scenery changes quickly, I used to run but since I don't drive it was largely the same places over and over.
  - mamon 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

thatonechad 9y ago

Is there any online game for this like shown in the video?

vixen99 9y ago
http://brainscale.net/dual-n-back http://brainscale.net/dual-n-back

AlmightyGrant 9y ago

Did you know that reading on the internet trains your brain to be smarter?? This article is trash.

djohnston 9y ago
that's not what the research (or the article) was saying.

racer-v 9y ago

The training exercise is Dual N-Back https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-back#Dual_n-back https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-back#Dual_n-back

wodenokoto 9y ago

Did subjects improve their dual-n-back scores significantly during the exercise regiment? Did they improve on other memory tests? Did they improve in learning tasks? I get that they got increased brain activity in areas associated with learning and memory, but I'd like to see subjects also improve when directly tested.

excalibur 9y ago

The first few paragraphs of this article read exactly like spam email. It gets better as it goes, but I still wouldn't trust any links in it.

heyheyhey 9y ago

Anyone have tricks to boost their memory? Lately, I've felt my memory has been a little off. I feel like I'm not remembering things I would normally easily remember. Like the other day, I was trying to remember what they speak in Iran (Farsi) or who the head coach of the Boston Celtics or what was the name of the Scorsese movie with Wahlberg/Damon/Nicholson. These are all subjects I'm very familiar with so it bothered me that I couldn't remember the answers immediately.

troupe 9y ago
Make sure you are getting enough sleep and at least some exercise.

garuuk 9y ago

I don't know where the articles source is but this linked study says there are no improved affects with with dual n back training. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4820261/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4820261/ This meta analysis says there's a small affect https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13423-014-0699-x https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13423-014-0699-x

Vernetit 9y ago

I think that the changes of n-back comes with a 30 day training 20 - 30 minutes a day. I create a Melody position n-back Link: http://competicionmental.appspot.com/router?page=melodynback3 http://competicionmental.appspot.com/router?page=melodynback...

jonbarker 9y ago

Wasn't the issue with n-back previously that the Jaeggi study was not replicable?

briandw 9y ago

I'll make a shameless plug for my side project, IQ boost. The first Dual N-Back iPhone app. I launched it about 2 weeks after the app store opened. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/iq-boost/id286574399?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/iq-boost/id286574399?mt=8

defined 9y ago

I may have missed seeing a mention of the work done by Dr. Michael Merzenich[1], professor emeritus at UCSF and an expert on neuroplasticity, who has been showing for many years that mental (and physical) exercises can and do remap parts of the brain to our benefit. His 2004 TED Talk[2] on neuroplasticity is IMHO well worth watching. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Merzenich https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Merzenich [2]: https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_merzenich_on_the_elastic_brain?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_merzenich_on_the_elastic_b...

fazelesswhite 9y ago

Created a very simple game out of this, http://memoryhip.ml/ http://memoryhip.ml/, have fun improving your memory guys :)