What goes up must go down?

[polar]

Hello,

most people here have claimed positive effects of dnb training, like
memory and attentional gains, often even more stable mood or
motivation. There was a research too, claiming that dnb training led
to measurable density changes of cortical dopamine neuroreceptors.
This would be quite corresponding with the subjective gains users
reported (including the positive effects on ADHD).

So I wonder, if you were training for at least one month, and then had
a sudden break (lasting from 3 weeks to 3 months) - did you
experienced some negative effects, like

- concentration or memory decline (relative to achieved level, or even
lower than before training?)
- mood disturbances (anger or depression signs without appropiate
reason - these could be related to dopamine variability)

Actually I have some suspicion in my case for mood disturbances - I
stopped training after 4 months suddenly, and after one month, for
like 10 days I became quite sad and nervous, irritated easily (bit
like ADHD child). Then it went away, but it was unusual for me, and
imho it could be downside of the motivational boost I experienced
while training. What's your experience?

[Raman]

I think we are attributing way too much stuff to DnB... Poor DnB needs
a break I guess.

[Gwern Branwen]

I've had multiple week-sized breaks, and one 2-week break. Can't say I noticed anything like that.

--
gwern

[Reece]

I was playing the Mindsparke version of DNB before I discovered BW
and
took a roughly 6 month break prior to starting up again (this time
with BW) in
late August. Performance on DNB hardly changed from when I quit to
when I begun playing again in August -- decline of about 10% (avg
50-60% declined to 40-50% -- no clue if the different interface had
some positive/negative effect here) on D4B which surprised me, as I
thought the decline would have been much larger.
I didn't notice any negative feelings or declines in real world
performance.

[Gwern Branwen]

And to follow up, I notice Jaeggi's 2005 thesis covers just this topic; she tested students who had enforced breaks of 10 and 20 days, and apparently the scores were pretty much the same (although I'm not familiar with her statistics).

--
gwern

[Vlad]

Ok, it seems I got my answers. But in my humble opinion, two or three
weeks are too soon to check for comeback of previous cognitive levels
(or mild, dopamin related emotional effects). And regarding irony, my
question was based on dnb experience, adhd observation, and several
researches about dopamin receptors.
v.

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