Do you ever wonder why some people can easily calculate a tip in their head or remember an address someone told them a few minutes earlier to plug into their GPS?

The ability to remember small amounts of information over a brief period of time like this is known as working memory, and scientists are also trying to crack the code on how people can improve this type of function. 

“It’s critical to have good working memory skills,” said Susanne Jaeggi, psychology professor and co-director of the Brain Game Center for Mental Fitness and Well-Being at Northeastern University. “If we struggle with working memory, all other cognitive domains suffer.”

But new research from Jaeggi is getting scientists a step closer to understanding how working memory can be improved. In a recent study, Jaeggi said researchers found that people can benefit from training their working memory skills and that machine learning algorithms can be used to predict a person’s working memory performance.

Read more from Northeastern Global News. 

Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University