MindFit by CogniFit, and Baroness Susan Greenfield

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We are glad to see that Mind­Fit is final­ly mak­ing it into the pop­u­lar press, at least in the UK. The pro­gram is mak­ing big news in the UK (BBC, Times, Dai­ly Telegragh, Guardian…) because Baroness Susan Green­field, direc­tor of the Roy­al Insti­tu­tion and a well-respect­ed neu­ro­sci­en­tist, is endors­ing it. We eval­u­at­ed it last year andTwo In One Task liked what we saw, based on our 10-Ques­tion Check­list. Now, remem­ber that no pro­gram is “best”, but that dif­fer­ent pro­grams can be more appro­pri­ate for spe­cif­ic peo­ple and spe­cif­ic goals, so read the check­list first and take a lot at oth­er pro­grams too if you are in the mar­ket for “brain training”.

Mind­Fit is a soft­ware-based assess­ment and train­ing pro­gram for 14 cog­ni­tive skills impor­tant for healthy aging. We typ­i­cal­ly rec­om­mend it for peo­ple over 50 (up to any age, you sim­ply need to know how to use a com­put­er and a mouse) who want a nov­el and var­ied men­tal workout.

The pro­gram has 21 exer­cis­es that train 14 cog­ni­tive skills. The pro­gram only works in Win­dows systems.

Below you have some demos, so you get a sense of the types of exer­cis­es we are talk­ing about. Have fun!

Inside and Outside Task

The “Inside and Out­side” task was designed to train your divid­ed atten­tion skills. Divid­ed atten­tion is the abil­i­ty to pay atten­tion to more than one thing at a time.

Two In One Task

The “Two in One” task was designed to train your abil­i­ty to per­form two tasks simultaneously.

Picasso Task

The “Picas­so” task is an exam­ple of how the Mind­Fit pro­gram trains your visu­al short-term mem­o­ry, as well as your abil­i­ty to rebuild a pat­tern from its parts.

Susan Green­field is a direc­tor of MindWeavers, the dis­trib­u­tor of Mind­Fit in the Unit­ed King­dom. The pro­gram was devel­oped in Israel by Cog­niFit.

Pre­vi­ous relat­ed posts:

Mind­Fit and Posit Sci­ence in the Wall Street Jour­nal’s “Putting Brain Exer­cis­es to the Test”

Awards and events this week: Mind­Fit, Posit Sci­ence, Seri­ous Games, Baby Boomers, Aging

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Comments

  1. linda says

    hard to do the fast mouse click tasks when you’re using a lap­top with a fin­ger pad, rather than a prop­er click mouse. Have the exer­cis­es been designed with this method of click­ing in mind, or just the hand/mouse click action?
    thks

  2. Alvaro says

    Hel­lo Linda,

    1) the exer­cis­es were opti­mized for an exter­nal mouse

    2) still, you can use them with a fin­ger pad (as I do too when I fly). Yes, more dif­fi­cult, but the point is that with prac­tice you improve.