brain training lumosity review

hi, this is jonathan withlimitless mindset. this is my review ofdual n-back pro. so, this is the next level evolutionof the dual n-back app, which has been demonstratedto have transfer effects to short-term working memoryand importantly, to essential cognition tasks outside of the software braintraining, which is what we want. we don't do brain trainingand meditation merely to just become betterat brain training and meditation

in isolation. we do it to become overallmuch more dynamic, mentally strong individualsin all aspects of life, right? so, i've been doing brain trainingfor about three years and i've got quite good at it and i'vereached as high as the seven back level in high iq pro and i'll regularly be inthe five back brain training level. however, i've found indual n-back pro,

in the emotional n-back mode,which is something new to me, i found that i can barely evenreached the five back level. the brain training app for cognitive capital a neuroplasticity hack that increases density of gray matter within 20 days of training emotional dual n-back trains you to... ...become a robust gangster in life or in more scientific terms to reduce emotional reactivity cognitive performance and factor tracking brain training software demonstrated t have transfer effects to short term memory and essential cognitive tasks outside of software brain training gamification feature

multiplayer modes the emotional n-back is a hardcoreexcercise for your focus muscles. it requires that you keep trackof two pieces of data. first is the positionof the block or the face on the screen and the secondpiece of information is the color of the word that gets flash alongwith the block that's moving around on the screen. an while you are doing this,you need to simultaneously

ignore the emotional data,which is the emotional expresion of the block of the faceas it moves around the screen and also the word thatpops up with it, which will be things like love, rape, vacation,child, baby, family, mother, all these emotionally charged phrases. so, what the app is kind ofattempting to do is overwhelm you with emotional data that you need to very specificallyignore, so you can correctly mark and keep track onyour working memory of the

auditory and the visual datathat's being presented to you. it's really a unique challenge.you really need to try it for yourself, and the purposeof this is to become a more robust gangster at life as i like to say. more specifically, in scientificterms, what this does is it reduces emotional reactivity and to clarify, this i willquote from a 2004 study of 97 human subjects.

compared with controls, subjectswho underwent working memory training, showed reduced anger,fatigue and depression. furthermore, working memory trainingreduced activity in the left posterior insula during tasksevoking negative emotion which was related to anger. it also reduced activityin the left frontoparietal area. this findings showed thatworking memory training can reduce negative mood andprovide new insight into the clinical applications of workingmemory training.

in a 2015 paper published inthe journal neuro image, concluded that working memorytraining has a positive impact on anxiety becauseof how it recalibrates our emotional responses. our results showed that trainingrelated gains were associated with lower levels of trait anxietyat post vs pre intervention. our results demonstrate thatadaptive working memory training in anxiety can have beneficialeffects on attentional control and cognitive performancethat may protect against

emotional vulnerabilityin individuals at risk of developing clinical anxiety. this papers and others which youcan find in the evidence section of the dual n-back prowebsite, which i will link to in the description of this video,describe more in depth the benefits of developingthis strong, heightened level of emotional andattentional control. and i'll say that while it'suseful in life certainly to at times be able toignore emotional data,

in general we want to bemore empathic in life, right? certainly, the geeks and the nerdsthat are going to be doing brain training, are probablythe kind of people that could benefit from being a little bitmore emotionally sensitive to those around them. and so, i wonder if it would beequally benefitial to have a n-back mode that focus onrecording the emotional data as opposed to ignoring it. the other day someone contacted meand they were asking me:

'hey jonathan, does your productcaballo biohack empathy?' no. not really. and i'll saythe same for dual n-back. after training with dual n-backfor three years, now, i think its had a pretty neutraleffect on my empathy. if you really want to empathybiohack, 20 minutes of meditation in a day, actually demonstratedto accomplish that. although i will say that i thinkdual n-back has been quite good for my emotional life on a whole because it's allowed meto more consciously ignore

negative influences and harnessthe power of negative thought as i desired. in a recent placebo controlledstudy of 34 human subjects published in the journal ofneuro science, draws the connection betweenbrain training and effectively biohacking the prefrontal cortex. humans vary enormously in theirability to keep a cool head in emotionally charged situations. the capacity to remain goal-focusedwhen selecting and executing

behavioral plans in the face ofaffectively salient distraction is a marker of success acrossthe spectrum of human endeavor, from vocational and academicachievement to well-being. recent advances in cognitiveneuroscience suggest that enhancement of affective cognitivecontrol may be established via targeted computarized training. the key to this potential stemsfrom reasearch indicating that affective cognitive control reliesto a great extent on the same frontoparietal cortex which isfundamentally involved

in the performance of well-establishedworking memory tasks. researchers from harvard,stamford, and mit, collaborated in a 2016 fmri study which suggested thatdual n-back is a true neuroplasticity hack that improvesdensity of gray matter within 20 of consistentbrain training. working memory trainingis central to human cognition and intensive cognitive traininghas been shown to expand working memory capacityin a given domain.

training resulted in substancialand task-especific expansion of dual n-back abilities accompanied by changes inthe relationship between working memory load an activation. these results provide insight intothe adaptive neural systems that underlie large gains in workingmemory capacity through training. about the functionality of the app. the aesthetics area major upgrade form previous dual n-back apps.

previously, i always thought thatthis apps felt really kind of amateurish and clunky, whereasthe ui, the interface the swiping and all that jazz,the animations, the scrolling of this app is comparablealmost with lumosity. i would say the sounds and animationwhen you do mismatch in the game are quite jarringand it really upsets the attentional resiliance challengeof the game itself. it does sync in between android, iphone, mac and pc.

and dual n-back pro hasthis gamification and multiplayer features which allow youto challenge your friends to a dual n-back tournamentor you can play each other 1 on 1 to try to gain,to try to steal from each other in-game credits,which is pretty cool. you are, of course, welcometo challenge me to a dual n-back duel. what you'll need to do isgoing to the settings of the app and synchronize it with your facebookaccount and you'll need to send me a friend request on facebook, i'llhave a link where you can do that.

when you send me a friend request,please send me an accompany message just saying 'hey jonathan, i wanta dual n-back duel with you, man. i think i can take you down! i knowyou're on like eight different types smart drugs, but i wantto see what you got!' send me a message like that,otherwise i may just ignore your friend request as i receiveso many! and then, in the app, invite me to play with you. i do have to deduct one starfrom my review because of a bug with the sound.

you have to connect to wi-fior data while you're using the app so that it can synchronizeyour scores and your performance with your account in the cloud. and a lot of times i receivea text message or a mobile notification on my phonewhile i'm playing and not only is this distracting, but what it doesis that actually breaks the sound for the duration ofthe dual n-back session. and this isn't really a big problembecause i've been doing it in the emotional n-back modewhere the sounds you don't actually

have to keep track of so it's kind of annoying, you couldsay debatably that it adds to the mindfulness challenge of the game.you're just 'oh my gosh! i just got a notification, but i have tostay focused on my brain training'. what i have notice is that,if i receive a notification within the session,if i exit the session and i exit the app, it says'you'll forfeit this session. do you want to forfeit?'i say 'yes, i do'. if i exit it and then i go back in,it actually saves my progress

up to that point and thenthe sound works again. so, it's not like my brain trainingsession is completely ruined if i receive a notificationduring it, but it's just kind of an annoying thing. i actually have the same problemwith my meditation app. sometimes i would forget to putmy phone into airplane mode before i lay down or sit downto do my daily meditation and then i'll get a text messageor a phone call or a notification of an airbnb thing in the middleof a meditation session

and... isn't there a way that thedevelopers of these apps can block notifications from other appsduring the 10 to 30 minutes a day that i'm devotingto mindfulness? during that time, i would reallyprefer to not have beeping, chiming, ringingnotifications going off around me but i supose if i reallywant to get away from technology during that period,during 20 to 30 minutes of mental sanctuary, perhapsi should just go completely low-tech and stare into a flickeringflame or something like that.

dual n-back is the gatewaydrug to meditation. about five years ago, after readingsome personal development books i tried unsuccessfully bothself-hypnosis and meditation. so i got some of theseself-hypnosis audio programs where you lay down and there'ssomeone with a really soothing voice just telling you 'imagine that you'reon a white beach all alone and then you're just watchingthe surf coming and go out'. and then they try to talk youinto an unconscious state. 'you're getting very, very tired,you can feel all

the stress just leaving yourbody as you get more and more tired'. and then you're supposed to gounconscious and the guy says nice things to you. 'you're a confident person'. 'people like you'. 'people are attracted to you'. 'you're good enough'. my problem was that my mindis just way too active

and i was not actually unconsciouswhen i was supposed to be, and i would just get irritatedand really self-critical. same thing with meditationand eventually i concluded that this is just not for me. but luckily i found dual n-backwhich has trained my focus muscles. its trained meto an emotionally compartament life and it's drastically improvedmy attentional control and i went back and i triedmeditation again and i found it still challenging but refreshingand enjoyable.

now i meditate 20 minutesa day quite consistently and so i really highly recommendnow to everyone who wants to habituate meditation to dodual n-back for at least like two or three weeks beforestarting a meditation practice on short term memory. for me, the most noticiable effectof working memory training is on my web development. so, web development is a consonantworking memory challenge and in a given time, there areat least several different

css, php or html files that i'm switching between editing,reading, documentation or instructions or conjecture onhow to correctly give them to output what i want. i'm checking e-mails,i'm checking seo audit reports while constantly checkingthe front of the website. you know, a websiteis like a grand formula and it's the job of the developeror the programmer to at any given time be juggling likefive to ten different variables

in that formula to try to producethe result desired. i'll notice that if i cycle offa brain training, i'll start to kind of drop thesevariables that i'm mentally juggling in my web development work,and i'll more frequently that i'm comfortable with, kind ofhave like start back at the top, right? i'll have to go back and refer backto where i'm at on my evernote project managemente file. however, i found that if i'mbrain training real consistently i'm able to stay on topof all of these variables

consistently and that results in mebeing more productive and getting things done a whole lot faster. like one time i took a pieceof css that i needed and put it into a php file whichis kind of a rookie web development mistake and i was like'oh! that was dumb, that's not something that jonathan,the biohacker should be doing' and that was the kind of mistake thati don't make if i'm brain training consistently. some other examples ofworking memory: i was at a

friend's penthouse party andi needed the wi-fi password and it was one of these long,complicated passwords and then i actually told himand put in my phone connected and then about 45 minutes later,someone else asks what the wi-fi password was andi was able to tell them just from memory and everyone waspretty impressed. i also noticed that using dual n-back you'll be betterat remembering people's names that you meet at parties... i also mention finally, you know,i've been traveling and living

in different cities and countriesaround the world for a couple of years now and one thing thati'm really proud of that i always knock on wood; i, well, this ismade of glass, is not wood, but i always knock on wood.there's wood over here, so i'll knock on that is that i've yet to losea key while traveling. you know how, when you checkinto a new hotel or whatever, they're like 'here's the key, if youlose this little key, we're gonna charge you 25 freaking euros'.they really gauge you if you lose

a key and i'm proud to say that,in all these years, i've never lost a key, which speaks to myshort-term memory and i have been using dual n-backfor the majority of the time that i've been traveling. you can find this app ongoogle play and apple itunes. i encourage you to not even pausethis video, i encourage you to open up google play or apple itunes onanother tab right now and just start downloading this app.it does have a... pretty good, pretty generousfree demo, where you can try out

everything that i'm beendescribing here and then kind of how it works isthat, if you want to play a whole lot more, if you want to playin the substancial amounts that i think are really necessary to experiencethe iq games, to experience games in fluent intelligence,working memory that i've been talking about here, you'll haveto buy some in-game credits and what i'll encourage you to dois to use my coupon code which you'll see here orin the video description and then it'll give you a littlebit of a discount

and it will also give me somecredit which i appreciate. and finally, worth of mention,is that it seems like ocassionally you'll see thesenews stories come out, where theses news anchor, talking head journalisttry to demonize brain training and then it'll say. 'these peopleare never done brain training' 'oh! brain training is totally useless' if you share a little bit ofscepticism because of that, i'll encourage you to gocheck out the evidence section on the dual n-back prowebsite, and this page has

a lot of information. it's reallydetailed, it's really thorough, it has dozens and dozens ofreferences to high quality human placebo-controlled stuideswhere they demonstrate using humans in a lab,using a double-blind placebo controlled methodology ofstudy where they show that there is long-term and short-termbenefits from brain training. and i hope you don't buythe negative, the demonizing that the mainstream medialikes to do about brain training. i hope that you do just a little bitof research on your own

on this topic. go over there, getinto the evidence section of the dual n-back pro website.check out that section and then go and take some actionin biohacking your own working memory. again, i'm jonathan with limitlessmindset, go ahead and hit the subscribe button nowon this video and i look forward to a continue conversation with you. this video series is going to presentsome cutting-edge biohacking tecniques.