5 Mobile Apps to Ignite the Genius Within

By Jennie Reedy
Mobile apps can do much more than eat up your time with addictive gaming. Many apps have been designed for constructive purposes such as training your cognitive abilities such as working memory, language skills and problem solving. These five apps are some of the best and most popular brain exercising apps available today.

1. Brainscape by Brainscape

Brainscape is a study aid for iOS that helps people optimize their study time for any subject. This app allows users to download flashcards for their subject of study or make their own custom flashcards. Unlike conventional flashcards, Brainscape can repeat the flashcards with the optimal frequency to improve recall. This app is free with additional content available for purchase.

2. Brain Workout by Best Free Addictive Games

Brain Workout for Android has four games to sharpen the user’s reaction time, accuracy, memory and concentration. Brain Workout players can share their scores on a global scoreboard and compare with friends. This app is completely free.

3. Memory Trainer by Urbian

Memory Trainer is a brain training game for Android that exercises working memory, spatial memory, chunking and concentration. Chunking occurs when people group small pieces of information into larger ones so that they can remember more. Memory trainer lets users practice a working memory activity called the N-back task in which they must determine whether a stimulus in a series matches one N steps backwards in the series. This app is free and users report a noticeable improvement in memory. However, the app does not support multiple users or allow users to compare scores on a leaderboard.

4. Portrait Health Brain Teasers by Healthy Life Labs

Portrait Health Brain Teasers is a brain testing game for iOS that measures memory, visual perception, coordination, critical thinking and word skills. The developers say that new brain teasers will be released for this app every month so users can maintain their mental skills. This is a completely free app.

5. Brain Trainer by Luminosity

Brain Trainer is a brain exercising game for iOS that helps users work on their cognitive abilities. The 10 games include tasks that practice problem solving, mental flexibility, attention, processing speed and memory. Brain Trainer comes with 35 sessions and the makers of Brain Trainer recommend completing one session per day. Brain Trainer requires a continuous subscription that costs about $10 per year.
For those of us who do not have time to exercise their brains or are not sure where to start, these apps can be life-altering.

Jennie Reedy is a full time student residing in Washington D.C. who enjoys blogging about LG cell phones and other Android phones.