Brain Teaser: Boost your visuospatial skills

March 19, 2008/Dr. Pascale Michelon/

Boost your visu­ospa­tial skills and learn about your brain
– By Dr. Pas­cale Michelon

Visu­ospa­tial skills are used every­day in many ways, rang­ing from going from one room to anoth­er in your house to solv­ing a jig­saw puz­zle and nav­i­gat­ing in a new city. Temporal lobe Frontal Lobe

One spe­cif­ic visu­ospa­tial skill has to do with mov­ing spa­tial infor­ma­tion around in your head. It is called men­tal rotation.

Let’s take an exam­ple. Can you pic­ture in your head an arrow point­ing to the right? Now, turn this arrow so it points to the left. Done?

You have just per­formed a men­tal rota­tion! Peo­ple use this abil­i­ty when they read maps, use tools, play chess, arrange fur­ni­ture, dri­ve in traf­fic, etc.

Men­tal rota­tion relies most­ly on the pari­etal areas of your brain (orange sec­tion in the brain image above).

Here is a brain exer­cise to stim­u­late your men­tal rota­tion skill.

For each num­ber, decide whether it is a nor­mal or reversed num­ber (see exam­ple below).

example visuospatial skills

Note: NO FLIPS allowed!

exercise visuospatial skills

Answers

Row 1: nor­mal, reversed, reversed
Row 2: nor­mal, nor­mal, reversed

Row 3: nor­mal, reversed, reversed

Pascale Michelon— This arti­cle was writ­ten by Pas­cale Mich­e­lon, Ph. D., for SharpBrains.com. Copy­right 2008. Dr. Mich­e­lon has a Ph.D. in Cog­ni­tive Psy­chol­o­gy and has worked as a Research Sci­en­tist at Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty in Saint Louis, in the Psy­chol­o­gy Depart­ment. She con­duct­ed sev­er­al research projects to under­stand how the brain makes use of visu­al infor­ma­tion and mem­o­rizes facts. She is now an Adjunct Fac­ul­ty at Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty, and teach­es Mem­o­ry Work­shops in numer­ous retire­ment com­mu­ni­ties in the St Louis area.

For more exer­cis­es, check out our Brain Teasers section.

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30 Comments

  1. Christian on March 19, 2008 at 1:04

    I don’t believe that the five in the first row is nor­mal, it is reversed.



  2. Judy on March 19, 2008 at 1:52

    I agree that the five in the first row is reversed.



  3. Justin on March 19, 2008 at 5:19

    It’s quite ele­men­tary, just ref­er­ence your num­ber pad. 

    745
    257
    424

    As one can see the 5 is incor­rect­ly answered.



  4. Kimberly on March 19, 2008 at 7:53

    The five in the first row is definit­ley not reversed. Its nor­mal, just flipped upside down. Not reversed.…



  5. zen on March 19, 2008 at 8:36

    to kim­ber­ly:

    Note: NO FLIPS allowed!



  6. sabadash on March 20, 2008 at 3:06

    the “five” in the first row, if dragged over the “five” in the sec­ond row would be of oppo­site handedness. 

    They can­not both be “nor­mal” or unreversed. 

    The first few com­menters were per­fect­ly correct. 

    “-”
    dash



  7. laura on March 20, 2008 at 5:49

    the 5 is defi­nate­ly reversed



  8. Pascale Michelon on March 21, 2008 at 7:14

    Hi guys,
    The 5 in the first row is indeed reversed!!!
    I am glad you noticed that. And it made you guys think twice as much: good brain workout!
    :-)



  9. stimpy on March 22, 2008 at 6:15

    the “5” in first row is def­i­nite­ly reversed. OK, no “flips” allowed? It IS upside down, draw it as is, the flip it RIGHT side up—it is reversed.



  10. Nate on March 24, 2008 at 11:36

    Some­one needs to work on their visu­ospa­tial skills… espe­cial­ly on rotat­ing num­bers like 5 and stuff… =-P



  11. Alvaro on March 24, 2008 at 9:10

    Pas­cale: thanks for design­ing such an stim­u­lat­ing teas­er with non-obvi­ous twists…what addi­tion­al brain area did we help com­menters exercise :-)

    Nate: indeed, humor and accept­ing one’s need to work on things are Num­ber #1 and #2 require­ment in brain fitness…



  12. Ashley on April 2, 2008 at 5:41

    the five has got to be reversed :)*



  13. Hima on April 6, 2008 at 11:09

    is it an abnor­mal ‘2’ ???



  14. Tori @ MindTweaks on April 7, 2008 at 12:22

    Giv­en the mys­te­ri­ous ori­en­ta­tion of the five… I’m thinkin’ Pas­cale took the “Tease” in “Brain Teas­er” rather lit­er­al­ly! :P



  15. Ann on April 10, 2008 at 10:49

    I think the answers show­ing that the 5 was nor­mal was an error on Pas­cale’s part. Until sev­er­al peo­ple made com­ments about it, there was no reply from Pascale. ???



  16. Stefan on April 21, 2008 at 5:07

    Nice game, hav­ing not trained my brain a long I real­ly some exercise.



  17. jeff on May 2, 2008 at 5:50

    the 5 is reversed.



  18. Ivan on May 9, 2008 at 5:45

    Come on, Pas­cale! How could you?



  19. Mr. Abe on May 10, 2008 at 2:47

    Over the past cou­ple years, I’ve learned to write upside-down (180 degree rota­tion) right-to-left to help stu­dents who are sit­ting down fac­ing me. :) Try it out!



  20. SammyP on May 15, 2008 at 6:02

    I had to stand on my head, then hold a mir­ror up to the mon­i­tor, then go around behind the mon­i­tor to real­ize that that rene­gade 5 is indeed reversed. This one proved to be more than just a brain exercise!



  21. Alvaro on May 15, 2008 at 6:41

    Sam­my, indeed, phys­i­cal and men­tal exer­cise go best together :-)



  22. Blanca on May 22, 2008 at 10:41

    I agree with a lot of you, the 5 in the first row is reversed… You can check it copy­ing it in a paper and then turn­ing it around…



  23. luminous on June 3, 2008 at 5:51

    BOTH the 4 and 5 are reversed in the first row. The 7 is okay. This must be a test to see how many peo­ple are pay­ing attention.



  24. ZuC on June 27, 2008 at 1:45

    5 is rotat­ed for 180 degrees



  25. Zeetah on October 14, 2008 at 3:57

    The 5 in the first row is reversed. The 5 in the sec­ond row is nor­mal. Com­pare the both and find the answer.



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