5 Ways to Train Working Memory for Brain Fitness

If working memory is important for brain fitness, and training it may make it better (and even improve scores on other cognitive measures), how do you train it?

Here are 5 ways to train working memory:

The single best way to train working memory for brain fitness is to use (almost the) same computer program used by Jaeggi et al. in her study. You can’t get exactly the same software that will automate something called n-back training. You can, however, use Brain Workshop, free open-source software that closely imitates the procedures used in studies of working memory. The software for brain fitness training is free, and you can download it here.

As useful as n-back training is, you may want to branch out and do other things. A visual game that can train working memory is called concentration, a matching game that makes you remember the position of pictures while you look for a match. There are lots of these kinds of games on the web (and one version is included in the Posit Science brain training software. I put one up on the Web – click here to try it out. (I borrowed the code for this game from a book called ActionScript Game Programming University and can’t take personal credit for it. It’s a great book about Flash game programming, and you can find the author’s website here.)

Away from your computer? Why not try Sudoku? You can do it on paper in books, and you can find a number of applications for your phone or handheld game device. You can even download and print them from the web. I found several sources, including here. Don’t know what Sudoku is? Find out more about it here.

Standing in line at the grocery store? Pick out numbers off the cover of the magazines and add them in your head. Too easy? Subtract them and multiply by another number. Still too easy? When was the last time you did a square root in your head?

Sitting on the couch at home? Spend time visualizing the route from your home to a place you only go to once in a while. Get a mental picture of your own home, then create a mental image of the first turn, and then the next, and the next. Did you get there? Now reverse the route until you get home.

5 More Steps to Cope with Irritability and Improve Your Brain Fitness

Irritability means letting small things that happen to all of us everyday set off a train of upsetting thoughts. Last week I posted about the negative effect of obsessions and ruminations on brain fitness – some researchers now call them unconstructive repetitive thoughts, or URT (for that post, click here). I wrote about the process of thinking about things that cause negative emotions.

It’s likely that this kind of thinking is associated with increases in cortisol and immune system markers associated with inflammation. The whole “chemical soup” is neurotoxic. The same chemicals are associated with mental and physical decline in older persons. Younger persons aren’t off the hook, though, because research increasingly shows that cognitive decline starts in early life. As several researchers remarked at the Cognitive Aging Summit two weeks ago, “Aging begins at birth.”

One of the things that sets off URT for many people is a random or casual event or thought. Someone cuts you off on the freeway, or you get stuck in the wrong line at the grocery store, or a co-worker makes a comment that upsets you. It’s at that point that the URT gets going, and it’s at that point that you can do something to stop it.

From the point of view of cognitive therapy, the actual event isn’t so important. It’s the fact that it sets off. or activates, a underlying pattern of thought that some people call a schema.You have a choice: (1) go with the URT, and feel upset, and activate a set of chemical processes that are bad for your brain, or (2) stop by the process and move on (in your mind, or in your life) to something else.

In my previous post, I laid out a three-step plan for dealing with URT. Those steps emphasized being aware of the thoughts, deciding whether thinking about the upsetting event was going to resolve anything, and then making a commitment to dealing with the thoughts.

Here are 5 more steps to deal with irritability and improve your brain fitness:

• Assign yourself  homework: Commit to noticing when you engage in URT at least once a day for a week.
• Pay attention to the event that set you off.
• Decide what the event means to you. Did the comment from a coworker set off worries about how good you are at your job? Did the person on the freeway make you feel as though everyone was down on you? Did the line at the grocery make you feel panicky about getting everything you had to do done?
• Come up with a more reasonable response to what you’re thinking. Maybe say something like, “That person probably didn’t mean to upset me,” or “Even if he or she did that to make me feel bad, I get to choose how I react.”
• Repeat each step at least once a day. The way you think is a habit, and the only way to change a habit is to practice doing something different.