Should you really do a training session with the n-back every day?

[IQwizard]

OK, so I have been training with the n-back for a few weeks now and
have already significantly improved with my current highest n-back
level at 4.7. But I havent been doing a training session every single
day. What I have noticed, is that my n-back score shows greater
improvement, between sessions, when I take longer breaks between
sessions; like a 4-5 day break for example. When I train more
frequently (once per day) I find that my n-back score stays the same,
or even decreases between sessions. Has anyone else noticed this in
their training?
I bring it up because the developers of the program suggest that you
should train everyday.

[J S]

That is an interesting observation. If the brain functions even remotely like a muscle it would need some rest. A 4-5 day break might be a bit excessive, because it isn't like Dual N Back is training the brain to failure :/

I'm going to try training every other day and see if I see any gains. I have been stuck at around 9-10 for a month now, would be interesting if a break can help me see some new growth.

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[Ben Epstein]

In my opinion, growth depends on how the N-Back is done. When I was doing rounds all hyped up, trying to cog my way through memorizing the order, I would get burned out after 5 rounds or so. My score didn't increase significantly as the days went by. As soon as I approached it with a Zen type attitude, hitting the response buttons by instinct almost, instead of memorization, my scores started to steadily increase. The "no-mind" method, in my opinion, allows the brain to do what it's trying to do without you getting in the way by thinking too much.

I think the deliberate attempt to "memorize" induces some kind of neuro-stress or whatever, which inhibits the pre-frontal cortex's ability to recall previous squares. I could be wrong though.

[Ben Epstein]

In case you were wondering what it actually looks like to do a triple-zen back, I was kind of just blankly staring at the screen, remembering to blink every few seconds, and was totally relaxed, not a single thought in my head. I also have to make extra effort to NOT "say" the color of the square in my head. For example "blue blue red." I find I get better faster when I either "think" the colors instead of saying them, or just avoid any overt attempt at recall entirely. Sometimes literally biting my tongue helps me to not do this.

[milestones]

"The "no-mind" method, in my opinion, allows the brain to do what it's
trying to do without you
getting in the way by thinking too much."

This may be the case.

Starting the last few days I've moved over to quad back exclusively. I
think my dual backing has become too skilled...I know I chunk with
dual yet I really don't want to *not chunk* and play intuitively. Not
that chunking limits WM increase entirely, but I think at this point,
for me, after training for a long time with dual, it's not the most
thing for me to be doing. I have not done quad every day for more
than a few days at a time, so I'm going to see if doing quad every day
for say, a month, leads to any perceived increase or an increase that
rivals what I got from dual. I feel my WM and attention control and
speed of processing are generally strong as a result of brain
training, especially from long term dual, but I think increasing
modalities will not only keep me from leveling off but improve from
where I am right now. My spatial
WM is typically slightly superior to my aural, based on what I
typically get wrong on dual n back but that may or may not be
meaningful. My hope is quad back will
not target visual wm specficallty but rather will strain my
information processing in a general sense, which hopefully will
translate into greater processing for things other n back tasks.
Obviously my goal is not to be a great N backer for n-backing sake.
It'll be Interesting to see...as I have only dabbled with quad here
and there but now am going to try to get on a daily scheduele (maybe 5
days a week) over the next month.

[Gwern Branwen]

On Sun, Apr 4, 2010 at 2:40 AM, IQwizard <pillsa...@gmail.com> wrote:

I think any such gap-related improvement may just be noise, or mych
more likely, increased enthusiasm / lack of boredom. I wrote a quick
and dirty script to visualize gaps in my own stats (daily averages),
and there seems to be a lot of variation - sometimes low, sometimes
high.

Attached script and text output.

--
gwern

[Pontus Granström]

Might be true that a few days of rest makes the task seem more "novel" and increases the performance. This is true for almost all practice especially physical. It would almost certainly be the case that in an event of "dnb competition", average scores would rise a bit. Where do people run the fastest? In the Olympics or during the national championships? Why doesn't Usain Bolt run at max speed at all other events? An extreme case but still in principal reveals the psychology of performance.

Still I wouldn't rule out the possibility that the brain needs some time to "rearrange" and build new improved neural structures and this might also explain why a few days of rest seem to boost your performance. Very likely it is a combination of both.

However forcing through boredom might be a good training regime for completing a 3h+ IQ test for example. You will almost certainly feel boredom during long periods of exam or test taking.

[polar]

I've experienced this in juggling, maybe in even more esacalated way:
you train for say 30 minutes or whatever, and every now and then you
do better (hold the trick instead of 3 seconds 6 seconds). But you're
not going to improve a lot in the actual traininig time (well it
depends). BUT, as you come the next day, your first 2 or three throws
are excellent! And then it gets the same as yesterday :))

so minding that we want to get some transfer from n-back, not just
higher level of "n", there's the possibility that you experience "the
first attempts after some break are the best". But if you wont train,
if you wont go through the "plateau" phase, you will more or less stay
where you are, that's my opinion. Which doesn't mean that doing n-back
every other day (maybe for two times the minutes) wouldn't be better
than every day. Maybe it really is.

[Martin Walker]

Hey there, IQwizard.

I've been training for nearly two years (I started soon after the dual
n-back study was published) and I've been through a whole host of
experiments -- some accidental and some self-imposed.

I've noticed the "gain after a break" you mention, but it seems to
disappear quickly. Overall, intensive training seems to be most
effective -- a full session several times per week.

I've also noticed in my own scores and others that there is a natural
flattening of the increases after about two to three months of regular
training. After that, it becomes more difficult, but not impossible,
to make big gains. I managed to achieve gains by meditation and by
doubling up my regular dual n-back practice with a variation of my own
called "nines."

Hope this helps!
Martin
PS. Here's a recent progress chart showing long term progress:
http://mindsparke.com/brain-training-blog/brain-exercises/long-term-brain-training-update/

[polar]

hey, thanks for a nice graph :) Can you maybe tell more more about the
"nines" exercise you mention? These doubled n-back sessions seem
really effective, but nearly hour a day is quite a lot of time, and in
my opinion could be could be tricky if you drop this regime suddenly.

On 8. Apr, 13:12 h., Martin Walker <martingwal...@mac.com> wrote:
> Hey there, IQwizard.
>
> I've been training for nearly two years (I started soon after the dual
> n-back study was published) and I've been through a whole host of
> experiments -- some accidental and some self-imposed.
>
> I've noticed the "gain after a break" you mention, but it seems to
> disappear quickly. Overall, intensive training seems to be most
> effective -- a full session several times per week.
>
> I've also noticed in my own scores and others that there is a natural
> flattening of the increases after about two to three months of regular
> training. After that, it becomes more difficult, but not impossible,
> to make big gains. I managed to achieve gains by meditation and by
> doubling up my regular dual n-back practice with a variation of my own
> called "nines."
>
> Hope this helps!
> Martin

> PS. Here's a recent progress chart showing long term progress:http://mindsparke.com/brain-training-blog/brain-exercises/long-term-b...

[Reece]

Polar, here is one of Martin's blog posts on "nines" that provides
more info: http://mindsparke.com/brain-training-blog/brain-exercises/working-memory-training-report-martin-session-1-nines/
(would really recommend reading all Martin's posts when/if you have
time though, as it truly is inspirational). It seems to me that it is
somewhat similar to the Variable N-Back or crab-back options in BW in
that one would *really* need to think rather than just update the
information from trial to trial. Perhaps it'll bring some PASAT-like
benefits to mental arithmetic? I haven't tried it yet myself, although
I did purchase Mindsparke's Brain Fitness Pro and find training DNB
with it to be a nice complement to BW and CogFun.