How Brain Games works

Brain Games is a brain-training app with 19 games across six cognitive skills — memory, working memory, attention, processing speed, mental flexibility and spatial reasoning. Each game is built on a classic cognitive task, tracks the numbers researchers actually measure (span, accuracy, reaction time), and feeds a ten-minute daily workout with streaks and leaderboards. It's free to download on iPhone and iPad, with Android coming soon.

Research consistently shows brain games improve the skills you practise — working-memory span, reaction time, attention control. Evidence for far transfer (getting broadly smarter in daily life) is more mixed and still debated. That is why Brain Games is built on the actual tasks scientists use to measure cognition — dual n-back, Stroop, Corsi, Schulte — so the score you improve is a real, comparable one, not an invented "brain age". Consistency matters more than intensity: ten minutes a day beats occasional marathons.

Most research and expert guidance points to 10–30 minutes per session, three to five days a week, with consistency mattering more than duration. Brain Games' Daily Workout picks three games from three different cognitive skills each day and takes about ten minutes — and finishing it keeps your day streak alive.

Dual n-back is a working-memory task where you track two streams at once — a square's position and a spoken letter — and respond when either matches what appeared N steps earlier. A well-known 2008 study by Jaeggi and colleagues reported fluid-intelligence gains after ~20 days of training, though later studies have debated how far the gains transfer. It remains the most-studied working-memory trainer, and Brain Games includes a fully adaptive version.

A Schulte table is a grid of scrambled numbers you find in order as fast as possible, used by psychiatrist Walter Schulte to test visual attention. Regular practice trains visual search speed and peripheral vision, and it is a popular exercise among speed readers. In Brain Games it is called Number Sprint: tap 1 to 25 as fast as you can, with your best time tracked.

The Stroop test (1935) shows you colour words printed in mismatched ink — the word RED in blue ink — and your job is to tap the ink colour, not the word. The interference between reading and colour-naming measures attention and inhibitory control. Brain Games scores your accuracy and average reaction time so you can watch the interference cost shrink.

Introduced by Philip Corsi in 1972, the block-tapping task measures visuospatial memory span: blocks light up in a sequence and you tap them back in order, one block longer each round. Your span is the longest sequence you can reproduce. In Brain Games it is called Block Recall, with adaptive span and a best-span leaderboard.

For memory: Memory Match (pairs), Block Recall (Corsi) and Pattern Flash. For working memory: Dual N-Back, Digit Span and Mirror Span. For concentration and self-control: Stroop, Go/No-Go and Swarm Track (multiple-object tracking). Brain Games tracks per-game stats so you can see your span and reaction times improve week over week.

Yes — free to download, with all 19 games playable free, including the daily workout, streaks, Brain Points and leaderboards, and there are no ads. An optional Pro subscription adds trend charts, bigger Memory Match boards (6×6 and 8×8) and premium card packs.

Yes — you sign in with Apple or Google and pick a unique username so leaderboards work. Your game history and settings stay on your device; only your username, points and best scores are published to the boards. Details are in the privacy policy.

Not yet — Brain Games is on the App Store for iPhone and iPad today, and an Android version is planned. The App Store version is free to download.