BRAIN POWER GAMES PLAY GAMES TO IMPROVE WORKING MEMORY BRAIN POWER

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Many games to improve brain power includes games to improve working memory. Working memory is one of the most important components of brain power. Some games to improve brain power work specifically on working memory. Working memory can be thought of as the ability to hold and use pieces of information in our heads for a short amount of time while working on a task or solving a problem like using a phone number or following a set of directions. In many games you have to remember information like positions of game pieces. However the amount of information we can hold is limited and the information itself is very unstable - a sudden distraction and the information is lost and you have to start again from scratch.





For an example of working memory brain power. Imagine you ask a policeman how to get to city hall. The policeman says "Go three blocks until you see a stop sign and make a left turn onto Green Street. Then look for the Calories R US supermarket about three blocks down Green Street.You go past 2 gas stations until you see the large white building next to the drive in restaurant.The type of memory needed to hold information in your mind while working on a problem or task is called working memory.

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Here is a brainpower game to test your working memory. The game is called BumperCows.

Test Your Working Memory With Bumper Cows




"We use working memory for understanding language, solving problems, memorizing information, developing new ideas, in fact pretty much everything that is not automatic. So something completely automated like walking does not use working memory, but learning something new like a dance move would.



If cognitive processing ended at attention, you would conduct your life strictly from information received at the present instant, without any internal state of the mind or abstract thought. The words of this sentence would dart ephemerally in and out of your brain, becoming wholly devoid of perceptible meaning...



Instead of this mercifully unlikely scenario, however, your attention grants the words access to your brain’s working memory, which briefly holds and evaluates them for the duration of their relevance (i.e. until you have finished the sentence or idea).



Working memory, though operating over a timescale of mere seconds, is central to human thought processes. It allows you to temporarily hold and evaluate information in your mind, whether from the environment, stored memories, or internal state, thus allowing you to process the world within your personal context. Thus, working memory not only allows you to remember a phone number and find your way home, but is also central to language, reasoning, and most of the mental functions associated with human intelligence".




The above graphic about brain power working memory using remembering a telephone number is from

Working memory

Working Memory: What It Is and How It Works