The Research Of Short-term Integrative Body-Mind Training Effects On Working Memory

Integrative Body-Mind Training (IBMT) is an integrated physical and mental training method, which derives from traditional Chinese medicine and concept of body-mind integrity. It has been found that IBMT could improve individuals’ attention, self-control ability as well as cognitive and behavioral capabilities within a short period of time. At the same time, the neural mechanisms studies indicate that IBMT could change individual white matter in a short term, which proves that IBMT could take advantage of brain plasticity.Working memory (WM) is the cognitive hub in the field of cognitive science research. It is a capacity limited system which can store and process information temporarily. It plays an important role in individual learning, cognitive and reasoning ability. The researchers found that meditation training significantly promote practitioners’WM performance. However, there is still no research concerning the role of short-term IBMT effect on WM in the current field.Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to discuss the IBMT effects on WM from two aspects:cognitive behavioral science and neural mechanism. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and dual n-back experimental paradigm were used to analyze and compare the difference between short period time IBMT and relaxation training effect on WM ability. Based on the data results, the trend of WM ability changed after two methods’training and the neural mechanisms of this change were found. The research results are summarized as follows:After7days of IBMT, practitioners’ visuospatial n-back and auditory n-back accuracy have been significantly improved. The results indicate that the practitioners of the visual-spatial WM and auditory WM information processing efficiency and accuracy were significantly improved due to short-term IBMT.After5days of IBMT, the coefficient between frontal brain regions, which associated with visual-spatial WM, functional connectivity and n-back accuracy decline. That means the sensitivity of frontal and parietal lobes network involved in visual-spatial WM load reduced. After IBMT, the brain needs less resource to complete high load spatial working memory task, which IBMT can improve visual spatial memory.All these results indicate that IBMT could improve individual working memory performance especially visuospatial working memory. IBMT has the effect on the distribution of brain resources and enhances the information processing capacity.