"How I Increased My IQ By 13 Points" - IQ boost via working memory training?

[Carl-Richard]

On 27.10.2024 at 8:34 PM, The Renaissance Man said:

This to say that progress in this kind of exercises doesn't necessarily mean progress in your working memory, it's just that your brain has developed better and better specific chunking and pattern recognition abilities.

8 hours ago, The Renaissance Man said:

Yes I'm not saying the problem is that the game becomes easier and easier, I'm saying why progress in the game will probably not translate to other areas.

I would think it's the specific pattern recognition and chunking that doesn't transfer between tasks, but the underlying working memory training that is indicated by the fatigue does transfer. It's like playing basketball and then one day switching to football. Your game performance will drop significantly, but your general physical fitness will stay the same.

N-Back training does load your working memory, or else there would be no platform to develop the pattern recognition or chunking abilities on. Your working memory is the general workspace of your mind, kinda like the musculoskeletal system is the general workspace of your body. The question is simply how much N-Back training loads it and whether it's more efficient than simply using your brain in other similar ways (e.g. reading a difficult text).

And indeed, I believe N-Back training is more efficient at this, because it follows the same principles of maximizing muscle growth: short and intense periods of work (e.g. 1 minute x 10 sets), short rest periods in-between (e.g. 30 seconds), and longer periods of rest (e.g. two to three rest days a week). So to speak, you can develop your muscles by simply doing manual labor all day, but you won't win the Mr. Olympia.

But how much more efficient is it? That's an empirical question, and paraphrasing one of my professors, "the evidence on the benefits of brain training on improving cognitive performance is weak to moderate", and the studies that show positive results generally point to e.g. single digit increases in IQ. However, I believe more clever research designs could show more convincing results.

Just like there are better and worse ways of training for example bench press, there are better and worse ways of training N-Back, and I don't believe this is well-controlled for in most studies. The way you structure your training, your focus, your intensity, your consistency, your technique, etc., matters a lot.

This is also not to speak about factors like internal motivation, which is unbelievably important for pursuing growth in anything and arguably one of the largest predictors of cognitive performance in itself. You will probably never find a high-quality study like a randomized controlled trial that uses internally motivated participants unless they intentionally selected for it, and that is rare (and almost practically impossible in this case: where would you find people who can't wait to start N-Back training but has not already started it?).

As for what I believe is possible, I believe you could increase your IQ by 10 points using a proper N-Back training protocol with internal motivation (and coaching) in one month of training. You could probably increase it another 5 points or so over time, like indicated by the anecdotal report mentioned by OP (although he was also maximizing other factors like diet and exercise). On the surface, this would probably get me laughed at by some scientists, but again, I would ask them for better studies.

 

So to sum up, N-Back is a very intense exercise, and it fits well within a training protocol that maximizes growth.

Edited October 29 by Carl-Richard

[Carl-Richard]

I've started on 7-Back and it's ridiculous. It's essentially challenging the 7±2 rule every 3 seconds (or every 7 trials depending on how you define it).

Edited 17 hours ago by Carl-Richard

[Reciprocality]

@Carl-Richard Is it not likely that the more you improve your cognitive performance from these n-back exercises the earlier in your life you get burnt out or experience similar after-effects? Assuming that your mind is allowed to burn more energy the more efficiently it thinks any given thing because it thinks an associated or connected thing in addition to that thing when it thinks it more efficiently.

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, Reciprocality said:

@Carl-Richard Is it not likely that the more you improve your cognitive performance from these n-back exercises the earlier in your life you get burnt out or experience similar after-effects? Assuming that your mind is allowed to burn more energy the more efficiently it thinks any given thing because it thinks an associated or connected thing in addition to that thing when it thinks it more efficiently.

I don't think so. Doing intense work for a short period (20 minutes) and then resting for the next 47 hours and 40 minutes before you work again is most definitely not going to lead to "burnout", unless those 20 minutes are the most terrorizing and traumatic 20 minutes of your life. It will lead to an adaptation response which will increase your ability to handle those 47 hours and 40 minutes spent doing other things, which will actually lead to an overall reduction in burnout, and that is what you're after.

 

1 hour ago, Reciprocality said:

Assuming that your mind is allowed to burn more energy the more efficiently it thinks any given thing because it thinks an associated or connected thing in addition to that thing when it thinks it more efficiently.

Reading this sentence is more difficult than a 7-Back task.

Edited 17 hours ago by Carl-Richard

[Reciprocality]

@Carl-Richard Imagine that your mind consumes more energy the more efficiently it processes a thought because this efficiency allows it to also process related or connected thoughts. Additionally, any surplus energy saved through increased efficiency is not stored but instead redirected to handling these additional tasks, leading to a higher overall energy expenditure per second than in the initial, less efficient system.

The duality here would be accumulation or retention vs offset or redistribution

 

2 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

I don't think so. Doing intense work for a short period (20 minutes) and then resting for the next 47 hours and 40 minutes before you work again is most definitely not going to lead to "burnout", unless those 20 minutes are the most terrorizing and traumatic 20 minutes of your life.

But my response took into account the cognitive improvements themselves on the mind, which you appear to theorise as being substantial, not just their cause (the n-back exercise) which your comment responded to. On the one hand you look very optimistic on the positive effects the dual-n-back training have on the efficiency of the mind in relation to cognitive tasks but on the other hand you are very pessimistic that the consequences of this efficiency can be similar to what I believe to be the consequence of those who already possess a very efficient cognitive apparatus, that being mental burnout.

But let us say that many of my assumptions are incorrect, the principle that more efficient systems produce a surplus of energy per task is tautological, and that this surplus energy is either offset or accumulated exhausts all non-magical possibilities, if your refined assumption that higher cognitive efficiency does not correlate with burnout is correct then this raises a few questions, 1. why the surplus energy is merely accumulated into some general energy bank, 2. how surplus energy can be offset to other tasks associated with the original and result in more energy spent without it correlating with burnout, 3. why burnout is trivially correlated with mental activity and instead a matter of physical toil or 4. why the surplus concept does not apply in this issue at all.

To be clear, I am only asking questions and doing some consistency checking, I have no scientific knowledge in this area nor am I invested in any given stance on the issue, I ask these questions to get answers since it could reveal nuanced principles I have not considered.

[Cireeric]

10 hours ago, Reciprocality said:

 Imagine that your mind consumes more energy the more efficiently it processes a thought because this efficiency allows it to also process related or connected thoughts. Additionally, any surplus energy saved through increased efficiency is not stored but instead redirected to handling these additional tasks, leading to a higher overall energy expenditure per second than in the initial, less efficient system.

Since your mind doesnt have an embedded growth-obligation, I dont think the Jevons Paradox applies to the mind  From my experience with 2 months of N-back training it feels more like stuff that was once challenging becomes more effortless. It doesnt seem like that the "saved" energy will then be spend on compulsive-thinking or overanalyzing or something like that. Having an "less efficient" mind and getting challenged by lifes problems, where youre not up to the task cognitively seems to be way more likely to lead to something like burnout.

[zurew]

@Reciprocality Lets pivot from the mind and from the brain for a second, and lets talk about physical exercise. 

Would you raise the exact same issues  with workout ? If the answer is no, whats the difference?