Train Your Brain to Focus With This IPhone Game
We live in a world where we are all constantly performing several tasks at the same time, so focusing on one thing can be a problem. Researchers at the University of Cambridge in the UK believe they have found the solution in the form of a game.
The researchers say their brain training app, Decoder, can help you improve your concentration, memory, and numerical skills. The group’s findings were recently published in the medical journal Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience .
For their study, they tested a group of people’s concentration skills and then divided them into three groups. One group played Decoder, another Bingo, and the third did not play eight hour sessions over a four week period.
At the end of the month, it was found that the group who played Decoder showed “significant” improvements in their concentration, so significant that they compared the effects of the game to those of ADHD medication.
Researchers recently licensed the game to the Peak app for iOS . You will need a professional account to play Decoder (subscription costs $ 3 a month), but you can do daily brain training using the app for free.
I played with some games today. The instructional exercises included both simple things, such as sorting bird images by color, and slightly more complex ones, such as trying to remember where the bombs are on the screen and drawing a line while avoiding them.
The app includes over 40 different games created by neuroscientists that test your memory, attention, problem solving, mental agility, language, coordination, creativity and emotion control.
They are also funny. Each game can be played in a minute or two, and I’ve found myself trying to improve my own results more than once. They are definitely stimulating and require your full concentration.
Over time, I can definitely see that it “trains” me so that I can focus on what I am doing instead of letting my mind travel elsewhere while I need to focus on the task at hand. And since the app keeps track of how you are doing, this is an improvement that I can quantify.