Lumosity Review: Brain Training

Lumosity was established as a scientific approach to brain training. Although there are several websites out there for brain training that claim to be able toimprove your cognitive skills most of them are dodgy, badly designed and poorly setup. It is clear that designing a tool to help you improve your mental abilities is not as easy as creating a java app of a Rubik’s cube. And this is why it is something that should be left to professionals.

More specifically neuroscientists should be behind every such attempt. Doing a quick search online will easily show you that most websites are just not professional enough to be trusted. This is not true for Lumosity. This is a quick review of the website which is indeed a complete brain training system. I will highlight the essential differences between Lumosity and other websites and why you should pick that system instead of any other out there.

Lumosity was established in 2005 by Lumos Labs Inc. in California and the purpose was to provide a way to improve your cognitive abilities at as much of a scientific way as possible.

1. Lumosity has partnered with neuroscientists to utilise their experience in the fields of learning and brain training and development.

This differentiates this website from others that are setup by the average tech and SEO “expert” trying to draw traffic. Constant updates of the content are always run by the team of experts. The researchers that they have partnered with are from Stanford University, UCSF, Harvard and Columbia Universities.

2. Lumosity’s games and exercises are based on the principle of neuroplasticity.

What that means in simple words is that our neurons are able to alter/increasetheir synapses to other neurons and improve our cognitive abilities if we subject them to constant training.

This is in direct contrast to what was previously believed about neurons. That we are born with a certain number of neurons that do not change after that.

3. Lumosity games are entertaining and fun.

Hence this is not a boring experience that you will most likely abandon a few days after you register. And this is the most common problem I have encountered with this kind of brain training websites. The variety of games can be limited in some of them but not in Lumosity. The difficulty of the games changes constantly and new games are added frequently. The users can also test new games and provide their feedback. This way they are cutting down on development costs and they also add variety to the system.

4. Lumosity allows you to track your progress and improvements in performance.

Getting adequate feedback is essential to tasks like this. Comparing your skills to those that you had at the beginning of the program a few months back will give you the sense of achievement. You can track your mental speed and memoryimprovement as well as several other parameters at the dashboard. The “My History” section allows for comparisons across all games.

5. What aspects of brain training should I expect from Lumosity and how much will it cost me in comparison to other systems?

You should certainly see significant improvement in spatial working memory, concentration, visual attention and creativity. Albert Einstein once said creativity is better than knowledge and he was so right! By activating novel pathways in your brain, new neural circuits are created that allow the brain to react to new stimuli regardless of previous experiences.

The cost was another great surprise for me since I had to choose between the free programs out there that had very limited to no value and some very expensive alternatives that were beyond what most of us can afford. Their program is priced reasonably at $ 80 a year which is less than $ 7 a month.

Conclusion: If you need the absolute best in terms of brain training and stimulation this is the only program I would trust. Yes, there are a lot of completely free websites but they are not professionally developed and worth spending your time on.

Video: Brain Training