Science, anecdotes and cerebral blood flow
M
Hi all,
I've been lurking this group from time to time over several years now. It's an amazing place where hardcode science meets anecdotes, where Gwern's cold epistemological "certainty: unlikely" is contrasted with personal stories that may be driven by placebo effect and where people describe their experiments and adventures on the quest for higher IQ.
I've learned about the n-back around 2010 from a friend who recommended Gwern's website. Since then, I've been reminded about n-back every couple years, reread updates about it, visit this group, install the brainworkshop app, train for a few days in a row and forget about it. Two or three times I had experienced what I would call a noticeable increase in mental clarity the next day after training (not necessarily the first training in the row). Last time I had such feeling over a year ago when the night before I tried Triple-n-Back (PCA) for the first time. I try to understand if it's just a placebo effect or maybe something I can reproduce in a more robust way, perhaps by different means. Hence this post and the following two topics.
1. Did you experience something like this?
It's hard to know for sure whether the mental clarity was real or if it was related to increased IQ at all. I didn't do any IQ test on that day (but I did the day before). I don't care that much if it was related and I'm interested in recreating that state even if it's not. My feeling was, especially in the morning, that I'm more attentive in daily activities and less running on my mental autopilot. I felt that it was much easier to think. One issue with reproducing the feeling is that I often experiment with multiple things at once, so it can be not only n-back, but a combination of couple factors.
I try to understand if it's caused by n-back and if so, why it doesn't happen more often to me. After that morning I trained TnB for several more days, making progress (T3B -> T4B, close to T5B), yet the feeling did not repeat.
Some guesses and random observations:
* increased blood flow - when I'm training with n-back I sometimes feel like blood rushes to my nose or somewhere around it. This was especially apparent on that night when I increased the difficulty level, going from DnB to TnB for the first time (D5B -> D4B -> T2B -> T3B). Do you experience such feeling when training with n-back? Any other ways to achieve it (I didn't try pharmacology for that yet and physical exercises don't do anything in this realm)? I felt this rush couple more times when using n-back, but with no impact on mental clarity (to some extent I think I feel it every time I train with n-back, but at this point it can be a form of self-persuasion),
* novelty element - maybe it's increasing my dopamine levels for the first time when it's challenging and before I get bored with it? Dopamine increases cerebral blood flow, so that could explain the rush feeling in my nose. But why I cannot achieve similar effect by other means (f.e., learning new interesting subject)? Why is it so short-lived?
* most of the time I play in the late evening or night,
* I think the cases when I would feel better on the next day, I was doing both n-back and some form of physical exercises (closer to cardio than strength - walking, running, push ups, crunches),
* sometimes when using n-back I feel tried / mentally drained as if I've studied for an exam,
* as Gwern's suggests in DnB FAQ, there's a chance I have some deficit or illness and that mental clarity state should be just my baseline that for whatever reason I cannot achieve. F.e., I can be sleep deprived and somehow TnB made me sleep deeper that night (interestingly I had very vivid dreams on that night). There's a chance I had issues with sinuses (need to test) as I often have clogged nose. But why would n-back help with a physical issue?
* if I do n-back too close to going to sleep, I'll get too excited and have problems getting to sleep. Interestingly, on that night with TnB I had troubles falling asleep as my mind was wondering around math problem I discussed couple hours before (after TnB training). Overall I would rate sleep quality that night relatively low, which makes it even more interesting that I felt that good.
2. Do you have any anecdotes regarding efficiency of n-back, or any side-effects you experience (both positive and negative)?
One aspect of Gwern's DnB FAQ I really enjoy are all the random tidbits found in people's anecdotes. It's interesting to me how differently people can experience n-back (I wonder if it's related to the mode they play (after all I wouldn't write this post if I didn't try TnB) or some other factors like being left-handed (which I'm)) and how some of the most surprising effects could be simply a result of self-persuasion. As I finally forced myself to start this thread, I want to take this opportunity to ask you about all the subjective feelings and random observations you have when training with n-back. Even if you think it's placebo, I'd love to read your story.
OK, I definitely need to work on writing short and getting to the point. Hope you find it interesting and that you'll share all your great anecdotes.
Cheers!
BonBonDampling
For some it's life changing benefits, for others zilch and waste of time.
My theory is, reason in Motivation.
Our brain is lazy, well not lazy per se, but the brain can't understand why he should drain his energy on seemingly useless stuff. It's like when we were in school we always wanted to sleep or do anything else but homework, because we didn't have motivation and reasoning to do homework. Same principle here, if person wants to just chill and skeptically try out some weird/controversial app, and that app starts squeezing their brain so hard, to a point they get headache, obviously they will be frustrated and not willing to spend energy on it, so they will do it half-assed, where they not invest too much energy, and then after couple days there is no result, no surprise.
According to my theory, people who were motivated before trying, they were fired up to get smarter etc., and they are motivated by Dual N-Back itself. They put double the effort, and saw real good results in a short period of time.
I'm interested to hear if someone can confirm my theory, or oppose it.
Surprisingly there is not so much about people's motivation in studies about Dual N-Back.
Only in here https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4820261/ they abstractly mention the subject of motivation, like ideally they should've considered motivation in their studies, well DUH.
BonBonDampling
I don't have anything to add, didn't notice blood flow or anything out of the ordinary(or just can't remember, it was long time ago). But I must say N-Back somehow deeply affects people's brains. I heard from multiple people that it helps to calm down their ticks. Like, how that even works
2. Do you have any anecdotes regarding efficiency of n-back, or any side-effects you experience (both positive and negative)?
I had good dreams and could actually recall them in great detail. My verbal fluency in conversation skyrocketed. My creativity and problem solving skills boosted.
Nowadays I try to do N-Back regularly, and I noticed, if I skip n-back training for a week, I get visibly sluggish, and have to put some effort to focus on stuff i'm doing. Something like brain fog starts occurring. Then when I do intense N-back sessions, the next day I'm much sharper.
Negative:
But I had short negative side effects too. I wrote a long post about it before, to find someone with this specific side effect, but nobody had something like that. I was doing Single Audio N-Back for some time. But then my hearing became so sensitive, that any loud noises or loud speaking was physically hurting my ear. I had to wear ear plugs for a week till sensitivity calmed down. I still kept doing my audio n-back training, but then... Some creepy audio hallucionation happened. After which I said nope, this is too much, i took a pause, and switched to visual. After some time hearing sensitivity calmed down, and everything went to normal. To this day I don't know what that was. Effects of N-back on a brain is something that needs to be studied more. It's fascinating and sometimes scary.
Important to note, this side effect wasn't showing in Dual n-Back, with classic Audio+Visual stimuli, but only in intense Single Audio N-Back trainings(audio letters).
This is the only thing you need to understand about improving your intelligence.
Intelligence is purely the operative principle by which you infer real from non-real relative to premise X.
That is it.
Language is therefore the sole thing you should be focusing on in the building of your intelligence. Language is the logical symbolic structure that describes the framework of a particular reality, which includes but is not limited to and certainly does not need to constitute any emphasis on, our reality. A logical symbolic structure is simply the conversion of pattern to symbolism to the reality in which it references which can be real or purely imaginary, as long as one pattern *makes sense* in light of another pattern.
You will develop your intelligence to a much greater extent if you preoccupy yourself with building your own kinds of languages which span the full spectrum of your imagination than you will n-back. N-back purely trains the most rudimentary forms of processing requirements for the performance of any basic short-term memory test and primitive pattern recognition. Here’s the kicker, without memory that benefits attention, you’ll never be able to consecutively learn any language let alone build your own for representing reality as per the structures we say have for logic, math, physics and chemistry, however if you do have the reasoning capacities to infer and build your own language you’ll never even have the ability to compute that memory and attention even matters. You could just be some arithmetical savant to the “digit span of pie” as some people are but never even understand what the hell you’re even doing let alone have the capacity to build a calculator to subordinate your capacities just as artificial intelligence is going to replace all menial jobs. The fundamental training difference here as well is you’ll be indirectly training short and long term memory as well as coming up with better and better ways to train them through language inference and building than you will if you’re
Language inference and building is the highest form of intellectual performance and developing that performance to higher and higher levels, and naturally, this is why it is the most difficult form of gymnastics.
I cannot promise you’re going to become like Einstein but I can certainly promise you you’re absolutely wasting your time with n-back if you stay in it too long without deriving what there is to learn from it and then simply moving on to higher developments. If you’re really stuck, then maybe n-back is a good place to start simply to slowly develop your attention and short term memory, however once you hit a certain level, say n-5 to n7, it’s time to re-check yourself into the hospital titled reality and start asking for feedback from its research center on what the next step is for you to move onto your next profession. A duck to fathom and develop better wings must leave his or her LGBT++++ to develop bigger and better wings, maybe one day become a UFO.
Refer to the recent post in this Google group about Brandon Woodson for preliminary portals into what I’m talking about here and or feel free to pose questions.
Yes you’ll get your cerebral blood flowing just as you’ll pump that neural dream firing rate flowing by performing reverse n-back arithmetic in your own head, intelligence in this instance is to make the connection between one performance task and another, aka the analogy between how exercising the mind one way say through n-back and it’s connection with short term memory and primitive pattern recognition is virtually the same as exercising it another way like as stated “what is 50 equals 2? 50 is 25 + 25 which is 5 * 5 which is 2.5 * 2 which is 2 * 1? If this is true what is 100? 100 is is just as stated plus 2 * 50. If this is 100 then what is 500?”
Actually this is a better task than n-back haha. I just made it up as well, for any reader have fun with it. One key ingredient to intelligence is the computation of patterns inclusive of inference and creation within a known system and this is one example of this. It’s not the full spectrum of intelligence in that it doesn’t reflect the whole hierarchy of intelligence as language inference and building does but it’s still fun nonetheless and certainly keeps one fluid, so too though, the next language game you’ll create once this one becomes to easy.
Listen to Dan Peña if you need to snap yourself out of the illusion. You’ve got one life. Don’t waste it fucking around.
“Teach a man to fish…”
I’ve worked a long time to understand the nature of intelligence, so you’ll have work the rest out yourself and believe me I’m doing you a favor here by not revealing everything. Looking back if I had this information to reflect on until I truly understood it, I would have saved myself a whole fucking decade.
Peace out! Happy wasting your time if you’re going to spend it doing something else totally irrelevant.
M
I didn't notice being more or less motivated on the days after which I got the benefits, but it's very subjective and difficult to tell in retrospect. I think I enjoyed it more after switching to TnB, at least at the beginning. I wanted to write that I didn't put that much effort into it, but looking at my logs from that day it actually was 26 sessions, 20 of which were TnB:
11 2022-01-31
11 2022-02-01
9 2022-02-02
26* 2022-02-03
19 2022-02-04
25 2022-02-05
40 2022-02-06
17 2022-02-07
14 2022-02-08
21 2022-02-10
11 2022-02-11
Thanks for sharing your observations on the side effects you experience. It's interesting that now you are in a sense addicted to n-back as skipping training makes you sluggish, perhaps the question is what's your baseline (i.e., you're more sluggish now when you skip or as sluggish as before you started training).
Cheers.
What I find interesting is N-backers haven’t yet figured out that you can literally just practice n-back in your head without an external input. Take any 10 set of stimuli and have them on random spontaneous generation by remembering to consciously generate 1 of 10 (along with any number of combinations and variations of this morality) stimuli. To increase the interference you can just decrease the number of stimuli but it’s just as difficult if not more difficult and deprograms you from feeling like you have to rely on the games constructs, secondly you can also train with one of many metronomes to practice temporal reasoning given in the standard external version of n-back you have a stimulus per x time interval usually it’s about every 3 seconds, by turning it into an internalized version as I have described it you can turn this aspect of the external version as a means of advancing temporal reasoning, of which, you can expand into more sophisticated levels of difficulty to the limits of your hearts creativity.
Following my route is actually a better way for you to have fun playing around and testing your pattern recognition abilities from the most elementary level aka monitoring the reactions of your consciousness as you play N1B with 1 stimulus I.e. the number 1 and then slowly expanding from there with both variation in n-back and n-stimuli.
My attention by the way needs a bit of a workout, I’ll be working on something that is more to my pattern recognition level however. I tell you though, you’re wasting your time with n-back and I’ve given you more than enough info explaining why though please feel free to refute anything I’ve said I’ll very seamlessly and peacefully dispute any challenge with the enlightenment of the highest judges chamber on reality. Promise, no Dan Pena punishments dished out either, totally acquitted of all charges other than than those you impose on yourself by not listening. No offense taken on my behalf on not listening though, deafness is deafness and getting mad at the deaf is just proof of my inability to process reality and therefore practical invalidation of my postulations. “When the tree of intelligence holding all of the necessary secrets therein fell when no one was around, did it make a sound?” - analogously speaking, yes the UFO’s are just waiting to be detected after Hunter Biden doesn’t get a pardon as too many of us have heard the Biden parade fall to the ground for us to be too stupid to still vote him into office again.
Best wishes.
On Saturday, 29 July 2023 at 15:17:16 UTC+10 Grusch’s SCIF wrote:
This is the only thing you need to understand about improving your intelligence.
Intelligence is purely the operative principle by which you infer real from non-real relative to premise X.
That is it.
Language is therefore the sole thing you should be focusing on in the building of your intelligence. Language is the logical symbolic structure that describes the framework of a particular reality, which includes but is not limited to and certainly does not need to constitute any emphasis on, our reality. A logical symbolic structure is simply the conversion of pattern to symbolism to the reality in which it references which can be real or purely imaginary, as long as one pattern *makes sense* in light of another pattern.
You will develop your intelligence to a much greater extent if you preoccupy yourself with building your own kinds of languages which span the full spectrum of your imagination than you will n-back. N-back purely trains the most rudimentary forms of processing requirements for the performance of any basic short-term memory test and primitive pattern recognition. Here’s the kicker, without memory that benefits attention, you’ll never be able to consecutively learn any language let alone build your own for representing reality as per the structures we say have for logic, math, physics and chemistry, however if you do have the reasoning capacities to infer and build your own language you’ll never even have the ability to compute that memory and attention even matters. You could just be some arithmetical savant to the “digit span of pie” as some people are but never even understand what the hell you’re even doing let alone have the capacity to build a calculator to subordinate your capacities just as artificial intelligence is going to replace all menial jobs. The fundamental training difference here as well is you’ll be indirectly training short and long term memory as well as coming up with better and better ways to train them through language inference and building than you will if you’re
Language inference and building is the highest form of intellectual performance and developing that performance to higher and higher levels, and naturally, this is why it is the most difficult form of gymnastics.
I cannot promise you’re going to become like Einstein but I can certainly promise you you’re absolutely wasting your time with n-back if you stay in it too long without deriving what there is to learn from it and then simply moving on to higher developments. If you’re really stuck, then maybe n-back is a good place to start simply to slowly develop your attention and short term memory, however once you hit a certain level, say n-5 to n7, it’s time to re-check yourself into the hospital titled reality and start asking for feedback from its research center on what the next step is for you to move onto your next profession. A duck to fathom and develop better wings must leave his or her LGBT++++ to develop bigger and better wings, maybe one day become a UFO.
Refer to the recent post in this Google group about Brandon Woodson for preliminary portals into what I’m talking about here and or feel free to pose questions.
Yes you’ll get your cerebral blood flowing just as you’ll pump that neural dream firing rate flowing by performing reverse n-back arithmetic in your own head, intelligence in this instance is to make the connection between one performance task and another, aka the analogy between how exercising the mind one way say through n-back and it’s connection with short term memory and primitive pattern recognition is virtually the same as exercising it another way like as stated “what is 50 equals 2? 50 is 25 + 25 which is 5 * 5 which is 2.5 * 2 which is 2 * 1? If this is true what is 100? 100 is is just as stated plus 2 * 50. If this is 100 then what is 500?”
Actually this is a better task than n-back haha. I just made it up as well, for any reader have fun with it. One key ingredient to intelligence is the computation of patterns inclusive of inference and creation within a known system and this is one example of this. It’s not the full spectrum of intelligence in that it doesn’t reflect the whole hierarchy of intelligence as language inference and building does but it’s still fun nonetheless and certainly keeps one fluid, so too though, the next language game you’ll create once this one becomes to easy.
Listen to Dan Peña if you need to snap yourself out of the illusion. You’ve got one life. Don’t waste it fucking around.
“Teach a man to fish…”
I’ve worked a long time to understand the nature of intelligence, so you’ll have work the rest out yourself and believe me I’m doing you a favor here by not revealing everything. Looking back if I had this information to reflect on until I truly understood it, I would have saved myself a whole fucking decade.
Peace out! Happy wasting your time if you’re going to spend it doing something else totally irrelevant.
On Saturday, 29 July 2023 at 11:42:41 UTC+10 M wrote:
BonBonDampling
" but looking at my logs from that day it actually was 26 sessions, 20 of which were TnB "
" perhaps the question is what's your baseline "
I think he was right here: " Gwern's suggests in DnB FAQ, there's a chance I have some deficit or illness and that mental clarity state should be just my baseline that for whatever reason I cannot achieve "
Maybe for other who's brain function normally and they don't have constant brain fog or focusing problems, they can't notice much difference from doing N-Back? it's just people like me notice significant difference(how i couldn't notice that my brain fog is gone, right), but people without brain fog or focusing problems, they probably just get not very noticable difference, at least not enough at the beginning to make them keep doing it and put more efforts, that's some paradox and food for thought
M
> I call this effort.
That's for sure and the best prove for that is that I'd stop training after couple of days only to get back to it a few years later. However, I made similar effort on other days and on different occasions for other tasks, yet no such feeling. I think motivation plays an important role, I'm just not sure it's the most important one.
> it's just people like me notice significant difference
BonBonDampling
There are many variables to consider, like motivation, baseline, and other personal things(like mentality/personality probably). I think Motivation still plays a big role(enough to affect results significantly), but studies just skip this part.
But I still in doubt about motivation theory, because that first Jaeggi experiments, they had random people too(?), but why did they show good results tho, why were they so motivated and in other studies people were unmotivated? That's the logical controversy i can't wrap my mind around
Thank you for sending me that link, that was very interesting to read.