Cognitive training is showing a tremendous potential to expand working memory, a capacity once thought limited and untrainable.

If you have enough working memory to both be processing this information and developing your own thoughts, you may be thinking now, a) what exactly is Working Memory?, and b) why do we even care?. Well, Dr. Bill Klemm answers those questions, and more, below. Please enjoy one of the most insightful articles on the subject we have seen in a long while, which we are proud to bring to SharpBrains readers.

- Alvaro

How Well People Think Depends On Working Memory

- By  Dr. Bill Klemm

Imagine dialing a phone number by having to look up each digit one at a time in the phone book. Normally, you look up the number and remember all seven digits long enough to get it dialed. Even with one digit at a time, you would have to remember each digit long enough to get it dialed. What if your brain could not even do that! We call this kind of remembering, “working memory,” because that is what the brain works with. Working memory is critical to everyday living. 

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How many of the people behind the blogs you read, have you actually met in person? I hadn’t met a single one before yesterday.

Last night Alvaro and I were invited by Bora at A blog around the clock for a blogger get-together at Jupiter in Berkeley . Bora who is a part of the Scienceblog umbrella had gathered an interesting group of people, mainly bloggers with diverse backgrounds such as life science, law, anthropology – you name it.

Remembering names is a huge brain exercise for me, since I tend to forget especially names I haven’t heard before. I have tried to pick up some tricks for remembering names from Merlin Mann at 43folders. Let’s see who I can remember from the event:

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