Levelling Up Your Memory With Brain Training

One option is to use some form of brain training. And here
there is one strategy that stands out above the rest…

‘Dual N-Back’ training is an exercise that involves watching
sequences of letters or numbers and then identifying when
there is a repetition. The ‘N’ here represents how many
steps back you are looking and of course it becomes harder
the more information you need to retain.
The ‘dual’ aspect means you are actually watching for
repetitions in two separate streams of stimuli.

This is the only form of structured brain training that has
been repeatedly supported by the research as a means to
increase not only working memory but also fluid intelligence
and attention (1, 2).

But here’s where you need to start being a little discerning.
The usefulness of improving your working memory is
questionable and the amount of work you’d need to do to
see results is significant.

Working memory is the type of memory we use while
carrying numbers during mental arithmetic and it’s how we
remember phone numbers briefly while looking for a pen.
The span of working memory is believed to be 7 +/- 2
meaning it can go up to 9 and as low as 5.
There are very few scenarios where increasing working
memory by a measly two digits would be helpful and rather
the focus should be on converted working and short term
memories to long term.
Dual N-Back is useful in other ways (for training attention for
instance) and can help you to better juggle information and
focus on the data that will eventually be transferred to
longer-term storage in the hippocampus.

Working memory can therefore be a useful skill to develop
alongside others, and will help to support memory retrieval.
But beyond a certain point dual n-back will deliver
diminishing returns.