Abstract
The therapeutic potential of working memory training for treating mental disorders.
Highlights
Working memory (WM) is a measure of the number of items that can be held in short-term memory at once (Baddeley, 1992).Working memory is hypothesized to be a core component underlying fluid intelligence (Engle et al, 1999), and is the base ability tapped by a battery of complex task such as visuospatial reasoning and reading comprehension (Baddeley, 2003)
There has been an interest in the value of working memory training for purposes other than directly inducing an increase in fluid intelligence, such as its potential to treat rumination in depression (Wanmaker et al, 2015), treating attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (Klingberg et al, 2002), and even improving deductive reasoning (Beatty and Vartanian, 2015)
With regards to the brain, working memory has been hypothesized to have a substrate in regions of the brain like the pre-frontal cortex, the most evolutionarily recent part of our brain. (D’Esposito et al, 1995) Its dysfunction is suspected to be involved in the occurrence of several mental disorders such as depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and schizophrenia
Summary
Working memory (WM) is a measure of the number of items that can be held in short-term memory at once (Baddeley, 1992).Working memory is hypothesized to be a core component underlying fluid intelligence (Engle et al, 1999), and is the base ability tapped by a battery of complex task such as visuospatial reasoning and reading comprehension (Baddeley, 2003). There has been a recent furor over the possibility that working memory training, of the order of a few weeks, could lead to significant increases in fluid intelligence. The same factors could plausibly mediate the therapeutic benefits of working memory training in patients suffering from mental disorders.
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