A good analogy for brain training (and a systemic understanding of the mind-body)

[Carl-Richard]

What brain training is to merely challenging your brain, especially intellectually (e.g. by reading, writing and thinking in-depth on difficult topics), is a bit like what weight training is to working in construction (or any job with heavy manual labor, e.g. foresting).

Like weight training, brain training optimally taxes "general load-bearing functions". For weight training, this is particularly the musculoskeletal system. For brain training, this is particularly the working memory (the "general workspace" of the mind). Both also tax even more general systems like the cardiovascular system, general metabolic capacity (your brain needs oxygen and sugar), etc.

They do this because they consist of short bursts of very intense exercises, broken up by smaller periods of rest (reps, sets) and also longer periods (training days, rest days, maybe even meso-cycles if you're a geek like Dr. Mike Isratael). The intensity is what recruits more of the basic load-bearing structures of your mind or body, again, be it muscles, or your ability to "hold" (carry) and manipulate (move, shape, build, destroy) things in your working memory.

On the other hand, challenging your brain intellectually, e.g. by working in science/philosophy/academia, is a bit like working in construction for your brain/mind. You do develop your working memory capacity (or muscoloskeletal capacity) quite a bit, and you also develop quite specialized skills ("functional strength") that are very useful and which you don't get from mere weight training or brain training. But you do not necessarily develop your working memory capacity or muscoloskeletal capacity themselves optimally. For that, you need an optimally balanced and structured schedule of intense work and rest, practiced consistently and with progressive overload. That is training done right, be it brain/mind or body.

In a nutshell: construction workers are not bodybuilders, academics are not Chris Langan (that's a convenient inside joke 😂).

Edited Wednesday at 10:48 AM by Carl-Richard

[aurum]

55 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

On the other hand, challenging your brain intellectually, e.g. by working in science/philosophy/academia, is a bit like working in construction for your brain/mind. You do develop your working memory capacity (or muscoloskeletal capacity) quite a bit, and you also develop quite specialized skills ("functional strength") that are very useful and which you don't get from mere weight training or brain training. But you do not necessarily develop your working memory capacity or muscoloskeletal capacity themselves optimally. For that, you need an optimally balanced and structured schedule of work and rest, practiced consistently and with progressive overload. That is training done right, be it brain/mind or body.

That's an interesting distinction.

So what's the bodybuilder version of brain training? 

[Carl-Richard]

27 minutes ago, aurum said:

That's an interesting distinction.

So what's the bodybuilder version of brain training? 

I just wrote it above: Chris Langan 😂 (more in substance than in process I guess). More seriously, the InfiniteIQ guy on YouTube is the guy you're looking for. I guess it's hard to find a suitable generalized concept that already exists other than "somebody who sculpts their brain" ("brainbuilder").

(It's funny, but that distinction, substance vs process, was recently made by my prime minister on TV multiple times and I was like "hey that's my kind of philosophy" and it sounded like it was his favorite way to sound deep without necessarily saying much of substance 😆).

Edited Wednesday at 01:48 AM by Carl-Richard

[Hojo]

@aurum

 

Edited Wednesday at 03:05 AM by Hojo

[aurum]

1 hour ago, Carl-Richard said:

More seriously, the InfiniteIQ guy on YouTube is the guy you're looking for.

I just looked up his account. It feels quite shallow in terms of his ambitions, but there may be something to his training. The question is whether or not his claimed results are repeatable. 

Edited Wednesday at 03:14 AM by aurum

[Carl-Richard]

6 hours ago, aurum said:

I just looked up his account. It feels quite shallow in terms of his ambitions, but there may be something to his training. The question is whether or not his claimed results are repeatable. 

There is an interesting dynamic that I see when people talk about brain training vs e.g. general self-development or spirituality.

When they see claims about brain training causing some improvement, they are generally very skeptical and questions like "is it repeatable though?", "placebo effect?", "is there even an effect?", while with self-development and spirituality, any perceived change or benefit is much more readily taken as proof of concept.

It could be because brain training is associated with quantifiable things like IQ which primes a kind of scientific skepticism, while personal development is accepted to be more experience-based and subjective. The effects are also more "enhancements" of what is already there, while the results of personal development are often more tangible and clear cut. 

[The Renaissance Man]

@Carl-Richard I don't know about increasing working memory capacity. Not every quality in the body adapts to training. Can you train yourself to improve visual acuity? Doubt it. My position is that you can become a better, more efficient, even more intelligent thinker, but the raw capacity stays the same.

In reality, I don't know 100%, but who does? To navigate endless possibilities I stand for false, until proven true.

[Carl-Richard]

On 26.2.2025 at 9:16 PM, The Renaissance Man said:

@Carl-Richard I don't know about increasing working memory capacity.

You just have to understand what working memory is. It's the basis of all active/intentional/voluntary mental activity, of all active thinking, visualization and imagery.

It's the general workspace of your mind, and it has general load-bearing constraints, such as the 7 ± 2 rule, speed of processing, limits on detail resolution. These are analogous to how much weight you can lift off the ground or how fast you can run; very general measures of load-bearing capacity.

Anything that loads your working memory, which is virtually anything, "trains" your working memory. It's just that if you load it with a bigger load (and in the right way), you will train it better (or in the direction of higher load-bearing capacity). How big the load is (and whether you load it in the right way), is related to how quickly you experience fatigue or loss in performance.

And why do you develop fatigue? Say if you are chopping wood all day and you experience fatigue, what is happening to your body? What is happening to your muscles, your glucose stores, your lungs and oxygen levels? Well, everything points to that your general load-bearing systems, e.g. the musculoskeletal system or cardiovascular system, have been working hard.

And just like a full-intensity sprint develops fatigue much quicker than e.g. going for a jog, some brain training develops fatigue much quicker than other forms of mental activity.

So if you do something intense with your mind that you can only do for a short time before you experience fatigue or loss of performance, then those are signs that the general load-bearing functions of your mind are being efficiently trained. And of course, working memory has physical correlates which has metabolic constraints just like your lungs and muscles (particularly parts of the "Extrinsic Mode Network" in the brain, certain patterns of activity in frontoparietal areas).

And also of course, there is some data on the benefits of brain training. Some do show increases in working memory capacity. The most controversial findings are more specifically related to IQ, but even there, you have some mixed findings with albeit small effect sizes. Despite that, I think the studies only show a fraction of what is possible, because getting a good study design that would truly test these things is extremely difficult, if not practically impossible, and is something you would never expect to find in any normal research setting.

 

On 26.2.2025 at 9:16 PM, The Renaissance Man said:

Can you train yourself to improve visual acuity?

Yes. Literally stare at a point on your desk right now and try to focus in on finer and finer details (grainy and well-lit desk surfaces are better). Try to literally find the smallest detail you can possibly find and then try to find an even smaller detail, and then an even smaller detail, then an even smaller detail, etc. Do this for 5-10 minutes and see what happens.

Edited 17 hours ago by Carl-Richard

[aurum]

15 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

There is an interesting dynamic that I see when people talk about brain training vs e.g. general self-development or spirituality.

When they see claims about brain training causing some improvement, they are generally very skeptical and questions like "is it repeatable though?", "placebo effect?", "is there even an effect?", while with self-development and spirituality, any perceived change or benefit is much more readily taken as proof of concept.

It could be because brain training is associated with quantifiable things like IQ which primes a kind of scientific skepticism, while personal development is accepted to be more experience-based and subjective. The effects are also more "enhancements" of what is already there, while the results of personal development are often more tangible and clear cut. 

The concept is likely just foreign for people. You don't really see much brain-training in the mainstream.

After doing a dive on this, it seems like Dual-n-back games actually could legitimately be effective. I am going to experiment and see what happens.

[Carl-Richard]

On 26.2.2025 at 11:23 PM, Carl-Richard said:

So if you do something intense with your mind that you can only do for a short time before you experience fatigue or loss of performance, then those are signs that the general load-bearing functions of your mind are being efficiently trained.

I guess one clarification can be that the fatigue has to be generalized to be indicative of the general load-bearing capacities being trained. For example, you can practice playing guitar very intensely and experience strong fatigue in your hands, but you might not be as fatigued in the rest of the body.

Likewise, if the fatigue from a mental activity is very localized to that specific activity, then it's harder to say whether it trains your mental general load-bearing functions or not. But even within that, one would expect a sliding scale or gradient of effects going from more specialized to generalized.

For example, playing guitar intensely might train your fingers the most, then your forearm muscles and wrist the second most, then your overarm muscles, then your shoulders and torso, then your neck and leg muscles, etc.

So for some exercises, the gradient can be more skewed to generalized or specific. And to determine what this gradient is, you simply determine how much fatigue you experience across different faculties.

Personally, if I do very intense brain training, it takes a little while before I'm able to do things like reading and writing at an optimal level of performance, which suggests that a generalized training is happening.

Edited 17 hours ago by Carl-Richard

[Schizophonia]

For me, intelligence is a frequency; The stupid ego is essentially about pretending not to understand, not to let yourself go to the quantum shift towards a more holistic paradigm.

I regularly have the choice to become someone more stupid or more intelligent, the choice of dumbing down is the choice of attachment.

No need to go on the internet to ask ChapGPT which drug increases neurogenicity and/or neuroplasticity, it's cumbersome, ineffective, and a blow to get lost in the maya to end up panicking and ruminating on the prison of existence lol; No, you just have to contemplate towards which frequency an action makes my ego slide.

Joe dispenza (I don't only have him in mind, but he's my biggest reference in the field of health) has managed to regrow the brains of people with advanced neurodegenerative diseases, or even strokes; Literally people with holes in their brains plugged out of nowhere.
It wasn't from a drug, in fact it seems there is no drug that can do a 10th of that, all he does is violently make his clients change theirself-concepts.

 

I'll put this post on my journal btw😂

Edited 16 hours ago by Schizophonia