One Brain's journey

I just came across a study completed by a team at the Karolinska Institutet that mapped working memory. The study team used a mathematical activity model running on a computer and discovered a mechanism in the brain that restricts the number of items that can normally be stored in working memory at any one time to seven. The study is summarized at a website called News-Medical.net

I recently had a phone conversation with Barbara Czenge, who heads up the Learning Center at St. Michael’s College School here in Toronto. St. Mike’s is a private Catholic school that is know for two things. It has very high academic standards and it produces an inordinate amount really good hockey players. Ms. Czenge mentioned in the course of the interview how she describes working memory function to students at the Center. She compares it to counter space in a kitchen. For example, if the task were to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and you begin by placing all the ingredients and utensils you will need on the counter. If the counter is large enough you may be able to place all the necessary items on the counter and begin to assemble the sandwich. This would include bread, a bread knife if the bread is not sliced already, a jar of peanut butter and one of jelly, a plate of butter, a plate to put the sandwich on and a spreading knife. Some of us, however, have small counters on which there is not enough room to place all the ingredients. You can still make a sandwich but you won’t be able to work with all the necessary items on the counter at the same time. So you will have to break the task of making the sandwich down into smaller discrete tasks and move some ingredients off the counter when you are through with them and replace them on the counter with new ingredients you will need for the next round. I’m no genius in the kitchen but it would seem to me that there are two important conclusions to draw from this analogy. In both cases the task of making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich gets done. Working on a small counter means the task might take longer and it might be slightly more complicated but it can still be accomplished. I may be blessed with a large amount of counter space in my kitchen but my working memory is not so blessed. I think sometimes, when faced with a task such as making a sandwich or, more practically composing a blog for this site, I tend to look at the whole task and get overwhelmed instead of just thinking about what I can deal with in the limited space of my working memory. All this planning has made me hungry…for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich strangely enough…