To-Do List Training

When stopping by the grocery store on your way home from work to pick up ingredients for dinner do you remember everything? Or do you forget a key ingredient?

Your working memory is likely to be one of the determining factors in your ability to remember all of the ingredients. Our ability to react to and store things we hear, see or sense is dependent on our brief short-term memory called “Working memory” which lasts for between 20 and 30 seconds at a time.

If your spouse were to say to you, “Please pick up some paper towels… oh, and also some basil and garlic for the spaghetti sauce… plus, don’t forget we need more milk – but be sure you get 1% not whole milk”, would you be able to keep all of that information in your mind long enough so that it is recorded clearly and effortlessly remembered once you arrive at the grocery store?

 To-Do List Training targets your working memory. This brain exercise unlike many of the other BrainHQ brain training exercises that aim to improve the accuracy of taking in sensory information, works to engage directly with the forebrain’s working memory processes.

Information about previous experiences are integrated by the forebrain’s neurons with sensory information. What this means is that the neurons allow the brain to remember and use information for a short time by interpreting what the brain hears.

The To-Do List memory brain exercises works as follows:

  1. A set of instructions is shared for your brain to hear.
  2. Using your working memory your brain must follow those instructions in order.
  3. Greater demands are placed on your working memory systems by sharing longer and more complex instructions over time.