Various Training Methods Affect Different Parts of Working Memory

Looking closer at Einstein’s brain, scientists have found that Einstein had unusually patterned parietal lobes and a structural quirk in his brain, which is common in string players and linked to musical ability. (Falk, 2009). This finding demonstrates brain plasticity, the brain’s ability to change its structural and functional organization in response to incoming stimulation, (Wan and Schluag, 2010). Brain plasticity helps the brain develop and mature, learn skills and memory, as well as recover from injury and cope with sensory deprivation or environmental enrichment (wan, music making). Understanding brain plasticity is of interest to neuroscience as it provides a better understanding of not only the brain’s development, but also the brain’s behavior. Learning more about the brain will contribute to our knowledge of treatments of neurological and developmental disorders (Schlaug and other 2010,Wan and other2010). A good way to study the phenomena of brain plasticity is by looking at skill training through different life experiences, such as music training and meditation. Musical training and meditation are examples of training induced plasticity as they modify the brain (Wan and Schlaugh, 2010). Researchers have found that music training and meditation lead to the enhancement of working memory and affect different areas of working memory. Each type of training tackles a different component of working memory. Current research on music training and meditation suggest that meditation and music enhance the different types of working memory; therefore understanding the effects of music and meditation training will help us understand how working memory functions.

To investigate the effects of music training on working memor...

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...; training the capacity to access heightened visuospatial memory. Deity yoga includes a complex interaction between systems and brain regions, which can heighten imagery capacities. Meditators are better at image maintenance and spatial tasks, which is due to the training of one’s capacity to access visuospatial memory. Also deity yoga trainers showed more activity in the prefrontal cortex due to the practice of selective attention during meditation. This is due to the involvements of focused visual attention during deity yoga meditation, which helps facilitate control, over contents and visuospactial working memory ( Awh & jonides, 2001; jha, 2002) During DY meditation the selective focused attention directed to specific visual stimulus activates the prefrontal temporal and prefrontal parietal connections facilitating an enhancement of visuospatial working memory.