Session number: 0
Average n-back: 0
Duration (min.): 0
The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science heralded the world’s interest in Brain Training when they publish Jaeggi’s (2008) study on n-back training. As a human being with intellectual limitations, I am wanting to increase my brain’s capacity. Like so many other people, names are hard to remember, friends regularly beat me at chess, and computer programming at school is still hard work.
I also want to be content and happy. In this direction, one of my commitments to myself is waking up (in the sense of being mindful). It’s my belief that our ability to pay attention (on purpose, in the present moment, and without judgment) facilitates happiness. N-back training increases this capacity through its requiring our presence of mind.
There’s a zeitgeist toward brain training of which I want to participate. Big names in computer games produce puzzling platforms to stretch our minds. Nintendo, for instance, has Brain Age. Also, people play cross word puzzles, chess, and thinking games like Go; people also take courses in memorization skills and in remembering names; universities too offer non-credit courses in study skills. People take these course for a reason.
We live in the age of data, information, knowledge, and wisdom. This age rewards those with powerful minds. The more able we are to manage, analyze, synthesize, and apply data, the better able we are to succeed in amidst increasing complexity. The collective unconscious knows this, and people are acting to train their minds.
What a gift it is to be living during these times and in these places, when we can train our minds in relative peace and health? I live in Vancouver, Canada. My upbringing afforded me excellent education, health, and a rich variety of experiences to create a powerful mind. Result: intellectual capacities that are far above people born one hundred or more years before me, and those born in arduous psychological and physical conditions of war, poverty, and famine. The brain that I have is a gift to me from the world, a gift that I cannot give to anyone else.
I have decided that the least I can do is to make the best of this gift via training it further and keeping it fit. The scarce time I have for training is two weeks over Christmas, the mode of training will be BFPro because it’s evidence-based and Martin seems to like me. In order to maintain my commitment to myself, and to honor my intellectual gifts, I have decided to once again join the community of thousands whom work on increasing that which makes us most human.
Who am I?
Shaun
This post was submitted by Shaun Luttin.
Tags: Brain Exercises, brain-fitness, brain-fitness-pro, buschkuehl, increase intelligence, increase IQ, intelligence-training, IQ-training, jaeggi, martin-buschkuehl, mind-sparke, susanne-jaeggi, Training Working-Memory, working-memory
“In order to maintain my commitment to myself, and to honor my intellectual gifts, I have decided to once again join the community of thousands whom work on increasing that which makes us most human…”
Good post, Shawn, but it seems we humans not alone…
You might want to replace human for the more general ‘primate’ activities:
Have a look:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJAH4ZJBiN8
But at least, as far as we know, the chimps can’t do dual n back — (yet).
If aliens exist, most likely these beings would view what humans are capable of in a manner similar to how humans view short term memory prowess of chimps. They might think: “humans are very good at symbolic language games but they haven’t evolved enough to do telpathy. Maybe some day they’ll figure it out before the sun melts their planet but let’s not
hover in the slow torture of their space-time fabric to find out.” Maybe this
explains the Fermi paradox? (the claims of ufologists notwithstanding).
It’s interesting to consider STM/WM from an evolutionary perspective.
Humans gave up some of their short term memory capacity as a trade for language, long term memory, and higher levels abstract thinking. Yet, our next level of intellectual progression might be a sort of instantaneous mind communication. This sort of thing, however, may not be in the cards — not an inherent potential prospect for development of senor/a/ita sapients. We chose a cognitive path that we will probably have to stay on — expand, but probably not deviate from.
@Will
Thanks for the reply. That’s a good point, that creatures other than humans do show intelligence. Also, it was fun to learn about the Fermi Paradox. I also tried to look up what you meant by senor/a/ita/ sapients; I didn’t find anything on Google. What did you mean by that?