Dual N Back Working Memory Training
Dual N Back | Increase IQ
The dual n back brain exercise designed by Martin Buschkuehl and Suzanne Jaeggi builds upon many years of research into whether it was possible to train one brain function (such as working memory) and influence another (in this case, fluid intelligence or problem-solving ability). In 2007, Graeme Halford (Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Queensland) took a step toward the answer when he suggested that fluid intelligence and working memory make similar and related demands on the brain's processing capacity. 
Susanne Jaeggi and Martin Buschkuehl posited that training working memory might lead to increased fluid intelligence5 (essentially an IQ increase) by reducing the working memory demands being placed on the brain's processing capacity. In a groundbreaking experiment, they adapted the n back training they had used in prior studies into a dual n back exercise by combining two kinds of stimuli (visual and aural), and by making it adapt progressively to the trainee's performance -- dual n back training was born.
Jaeggi and Buschkuehl's dual n back study recorded increases in fluid intelligence for all participants (graduate students) of more than 40% in comparison to a control group who did not participate in the training. (The researchers calculated fluid intelligence as the number of correct answers given to a standard set of IQ test questions6 in a constrained time period.)MindSparke's Brain Fitness Pro and Brain Fitness Pro SE include the classic dual n back exercise as well as enhanced and extended training methods to multiply the brain training benefits.
Dual N Back | Lasting, Progressive Improvement
The more we train our brains with working memory exercise the larger it grows both physically and in the number of neural connections.1 Researchers at Sweden's prestigious Karolinska Institutet, a European medical university, have demonstrated that intensive training of working memory produces measurable changes in the brain,2 direct evidence of brain plasticity.
Related studies show that working memory is not limited to six or seven items as thought previously thought.3 Karolinska Institutet researchers4 have found that a period of brain training with MindSparke's training improves working memory as indicated by the pink dotted line on the chart above.
Mind Sparke's Brain Fitness Pro directly targets working memory with dual n back exercises and enhanced training providing subsidiary benefits to problem solving, sensory perception, and long-term memory. Trainees enjoy working memory increases that exceed those projected by the Karoliska Institutet (see yellow line). Customers as old as seventy-five, for instance, have increased their working memory from four or five items to seven items with Brain Fitness Pro's exercises. Every customer who completes at least 19 days of training enjoys a substantial increase in working memory.
In 2011, the brain fitness researchers (Suzanne Jaeggi and Martin Buschkuehl) who conducted the original 2008 study demonstrating IQ increases from the training followed up with a study on the long term impact of n-back training in children. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this research shows that intensive working memory training will increase IQ long term.
Trainees have found that improvements in attention, working memory, fluid intelligence, and general cognition continue even after an extended break in training. And that continued training leads to continued improvement.
