Brain Games

The Loh Down On Science

Your braiiiins!  That’s what cognitive scientists want—your braiiins!

This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science, saying:  Don’t be scared.

This is not some real-life version of The Walking Dead.  We’re talking about the website testmybrain.org has online puzzles and activities for people to do.  But the activities are really experiments, designed to test scientific theories about how the brain works.  This is no secret.  The site even lists the academic papers that have resulted from players’ data!  Which is anonymous, though you will be asked for things like your age and ethnicity. 

In the game called “Quick picture guessing” you say whether an image that flashes by is a car or something else.  A flower, say.  If you think it’s a car, you press one.  If you think it’s not, you press two.  At the end, the game tells you how you scored, relative to the average. 

If, like some of us, you did, shall we say, poorly, you can play again.  Try it yourself at testmybrain.org

And again and again.  Darn those flashing cars!  I’m doing it for science!  Really!!!

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.