10 years of brain nbacking experience

[Ivan Antxt]

Hello everyone, I've trained for ten years NBack and do not know anything else that has such improvement effects on different areas of life. For so long obseravtion, watching how my relatives, friends, colleagues are training, I've stated some psychological effects, that have not been mentioned in studies, that I've read, maybe I'm repeating someone I don't know... Anyway, my solid hypothesis is that all genius people that we know from Da Vinci, Telsa to Сaravaggio and Bartini - are the ones with high amount of working memory. So, we could become like them, not by being born so, but via training. I don't know, how it would influence genetics selection, or something like that. E.g. in China one woman was sued because her husband was waiting children like beautiful her, but woman had done so many plustic surgery, that child was quite not similar like her. Maybe our wives/husband will tell us, ones that training, "your baby should have been smarter!"

Anyway, I have written video about effects on YouTube, but it is in Russian, but has built-in translation by Google - https://youtu.be/FU5b-82Tybw maybe someone will find it useful

About some correlation (by Single NBack levels)

2nd - mean value of people on the Earth

3rd - specialists

4th - lead specialists

5th - most confident in himself person, usually head of section in corporation

6th - vice versa, most incofident

7th - very irritable

8th - tells smart things in very cloudy, hardly understandable way

9th - starting golden era of Single NBack levels, I don't find any disadvantages of this and higher level, at this point there ability to form very elegant phrases occurs

10th - 11th - here one could analyze what thought he is thinking and why, what ideas form this conclusion, even these ideas were heard 10 years ago. Here the intelligence becomes clear

12th - interesting, how one said, it is possible to predict how one would think in certain future, without actually being in it

Maybe I'll remember something more and write about it

https://link.medium.com/A8lxB8qQn3 here is one article about intelligence, that I've written in Russian, translated to English

[Gore Lando]

Thanks for the report! Tell me, do you still increase your n-back level, or have you found a tier ± 1 that you stay on?

After years of doing this, my n-back level rarely rises above where I've plateaued (very slowly, perhaps), but I find that the important thing is the difficulty. Whether I am on my plateau or have risen above it, if the task is difficult and I do it for long enough, I seem to benefit.

I'll check out the video thank you. Here is one of my favorite Rus poems (I read it in translation, although I use text to speech to hear the sound too)

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[Ivan Antxt]

Thanks for the poem, I was not knowing it before!

Yes, I'm also plataeued, and more, I've lost 2 Single NBack levels after COVID-19 illness last year, and hard trying to get levels back. Anyway I try to train more in order to see, what new abilities are there.

Interesting thing about COVID, there were some studies, that COVID makes brains older by 20 years, and it corresonds with my estimate, that we loose 1 level of Single NBack per 10-15-20 years, due to intensivity of brain work. This is perfect correlation with my -2 levels by disease :)

воскресенье, 10 июля 2022 г. в 16:54:49 UTC-4, gore:

[itrn...@gmail.com]

Do you mostly train single n back? If so, which ones? Have you noticed different effects of other dual, triple, or quad n back, etc?

[Ivan Antxt]

Many years ago I've read one study on gwern.net, where was the statement about that single NBack is the fastest way to increase working memory. Initially I was training Dual NBack, but after trying Single, I have chosen this one. Nowdays I find following benefits for me: there is much less tradeoffs between stimuli, which one I has to reminder; but disadvantage - there is clustering/chunking problem occurs. Anyway, I train with repeating all "snake" of positions every move, this is counter-intuitive, some other have given link to Jaeggi or other scientist, that assume if intuitive way the best, Daniel trains this way (that makes 7 QNB on YouTube). But I find it more suitable for me repeated Single Mode. And final conclusion by colleague in training coghort - any type of training is good if it is suitable for one.

Main my hypothesis is that Dual, Triple, Quad levels are somehow correlated with each other

And maybe just steps between levels are harder if you are using multi stimuli, it is more pain to train 3 QNB after 2 QNB, than 3 Single after 2 Single :)

понедельник, 11 июля 2022 г. в 13:13:28 UTC-4, itrn...@gmail.com:

[Ivan Antxt]

So answering questions about different effects: I don't think so, they seems to be the same whatever type of training one uses

понедельник, 11 июля 2022 г. в 18:03:00 UTC-4, Ivan Antxt:

[dominic lambert]

This reminds me of physical training. People who have trained their bodies for decades typically say the best type of training is the type that you'll stick to. Adherence is the most important aspect of any training program.

[Ruslan]

Thank you for posting this! It gives me motivation to train more. I have been training DNB for about 9 months, half an hour each day, I have plateaued for about 3 months on DNB-6, very rarely touching 7.

I am very interested in any correlated effects of NBack. After a first month I have started to see vivid colorful dreams, and they are very interesting, I never thought my brain could generate anything like that!

My chess game also improved a lot (~100 ELO, from 1900 to 2000) without any specific dedicated chess training, and few other things.

Have you noticed anything like that?

понедельник, 11 июля 2022 г. в 16:41:37 UTC-7, dominic lambert:

[itrn...@gmail.com]

oh wow did most of your performance improvement in other areas of life appear when you were making progress in DNB, or even when you were plateauing at DNB-6?

[Ruslan]

I would not say, that my life miraculously improved because of DNB, I see some changes, but I'd like to find some quantitative way of checking it too, otherwise it might be just placebo effect.
But I couldn't find any, f.e. chess Elo rating I mentioned might be a good one, but still it is not 100%, since improvement might be just because I am playing more (which, I think, I am not) or some other explanation like variance, queen gambit effect and whatnot.

In general, I can't find reliable way of measuring my improvements, that's why I am asking around. I agree with the author of this post, that many DNB researches are very short in time (from few weeks to few months), while main benefits might be visible only after long period of training.

That's why I am asking around to see if people who train for long time observe similar changes

[A W]

The way I quantify it is using odd one out and digit span tasks on brainlabs.me and reaction time on human benchmark. People tend to avoid daily testing because they think that training effect will be a confounder that makes the data useless, but for me that has not been true, because when you play the games over a long period of time, you eventually hit asymptote. I even think before asymptote you can project the amount of improvement that is happening because of training effect, and then notice accelerations or decelerations in the trends. BTW, chess rating kind of works, but its very unspecific to a particular cognitive ability.

[Ruslan]

Thank you for your suggestion! I will try brainlabs.me

[Ivan Antxt]

>I would not say, that my life miraculously improved because of DNB, I see some changes, but I'd like to find some quantitative way of checking it too, otherwise it might be just placebo effect.

This could be checked by absence of levels. E.g. friend of mine has declined observable effects on his life of NBack training, and after vacation, where he was drinking alcohol a lot on beach, he have lost 2 Single NBack levels, and after and only after that he concluded: when I can't reach certain levels of Single NBack, I can't such easily find words in different situation

NBack itself is quite self-esteem lowering excercise, when I find, that many abilities, that I was associated with me and my personality - are strongly correlated with achieved size of working memory. So, I could imagine, that our psychology somehow hides this fact, this cause of effects from ourselves, because it hurts self-esteem

Anyway, I've spoked with hundreds of people, and dozens of them have started training, so I see exact effects of excerise, of working memory volume to one's life. And that is the first message in the thread is about :)

вторник, 12 июля 2022 г. в 22:33:33 UTC-4, jey...@gmail.com:

[Ivan Antxt]

> The way I quantify it

I'm using Mensa Brain Index (MBI) in iOS application, this is strongly correlates with everyday state. I could see significant change in abilities to solve tasks and communicate, when there was lowering of MBI. And when I've pushed MBI to maximum values by training in MBI application (up to 999 average, 997 in particular estimates), I've found that I've solved very complex problems easily. One problem is that is that no good evidence on the edge of scale, I think they should have increase range about 1500 and so on :)

By the way, Mensa's training greatly supports NBack excercise, if NBack training working memory, the Mensa Brain Index allows to train not only memory, but concentration, agility, perception and reasoning also. Only after MBI training I've large growth in IQ points in test, up to maximum in Mensa Brain Test App. Unfortunetaly, I have not passed certifed IQ test. But by testing about 100-200 times in app, I can conclude, that one day I could solve puzzle, other day, for same puzzle, same me - could not. And this days of abilities and not abilities are correlated with my ability to get maximum points in MBI

So training effect on IQ, to my mind, is strongly overestimated. I have no worry about it nowdays

среда, 13 июля 2022 г. в 19:12:07 UTC-4, A W:

[dominic lambert]

I couldn't find any app called "Mensa Brain Index" in the iOS app store. Are you referencing the Mensa Brain Training app?

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[Ivan Antxt]

https://apps.apple.com/ru/app/mensa-brain-training/id768606792 It is called Mensa Brain Training, and yep, it measures Mensa Brain Index :)

пятница, 15 июля 2022 г. в 12:48:28 UTC-4, dom...@annalambert.com:

[Victor gold]

How is this different from the other numerous games that don't work?

I mean, one can also make precisely the same claims you have made for Lumosity and when these sorts of programs are scrutinized, they generally amount to nothing.

[Jun Ichigo]

well there is a big difference between Dual N-Back and crappy Lumosity games, in Dual N-Back you have to retain at least 4 bits of information and constantly process it, and when you get up on levels lets say at Dual 6-back you have to hold 12 bits of informaton in your working memory and process it, and on top of that using brain workshop software you can add Color and picture, making it even harder so with Position, Audio, Color and picture you have to maintain 24 bits of information constantly and process it as fast as you can, this is not an easy task, neither any other crappy childish brain games compare to it.

ორშაბათი, 25 ივლისი, 2022-ში 00:30:02 UTC+4-ზე goldvi...@gmail.com-მა დაწერა:

[Leonardo]

  Are Brainlabs scores representative of the overall population? If so, very disappointing scores I had:

[Wilma Skillma]

Are you silly? Learn how percentiles work

. You are top 2%

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/brain-training/f206d7fd-7087-4810-b305-6bc2bf8a5813n%40googlegroups.com.

[Leonardo]

I had an IQ of 143 on WAIS at 21. If that distribution is accurate, it means that I'm dumber now. I know perfectly well how percentiles work. 

[Bo T]

Brainlabs is not representative of the general population, Leo. Just like humanbenchmark, I know people who use it for training, not for testing. 98.9 percentile on brainlabs is 99+ compared to the general population. As you may know, I have an IQ of 137 (fluid intelligence), and I only score 96.6 percentile on brainlabs.