FAQS

First, you need to go the the BrainHQ website: www.brainhq.com. Next, you will click on "Log In" in the upper right corner of the screen, then fill in the log-in information in the window that pops up (email and password). The password is the one you were given when you first enrolled in the Brain Fitness class, and you should not change it (it reflects the semester you enrolled). Keep this same password for as long as you are in the class. After you enter this information, click "Log In" and you will be taken to the home page of BrainHQ. You can tell you are logged in because the page will be orange, and you will see your name in the upper right corner of the screen. Watch this video tutorial for a demonstration on how to properly log in to your BrainHQ account and get access to the exercises (it's only 2 minutes).

The most important thing about using BrainHQ is that you use it regularly and stick with it. The answer to how much time you use it and how often lies in your preferences and how many exercises you do that make you feel like you have had a good challenge during a session (one sitting). If you are a person that is up to completing a one-hour session (either in one sitting or split up during the day), then you can do that. If so, training on 3 consecutive days in a row would be best--then you are done for the week. If you would rather do 30 minutes per day 6 days per week, that is fine too. The idea is to try to do about 3 hours per week, if you are using time as a milestone. But more important is to set the goal of how many levels you would like to work on each week. The default goal is 24 levels, which equates to about one hour of time total, but we suggest you try for much more to get the maximum benefit.

The main reason for using levels as goals rather than time is that the time goal may send the wrong message and encourage a more casual approach to training—“If I do BrainHQ for 30 minutes, that’s good, and it doesn’t matter if I work hard or not or do 10 levels or just 2, as long as I put in 30 minutes.” By changing the goals to be level-driven, you may approach your training and know you need to get through X (your goal) number of levels in that session. Sometimes it may take you 20 minutes; other days it may take you 40, but you will be completing all the levels you set out to do. You can think of it as running: you can say you want to go jogging for 30 minutes, or you can set a goal that you want to run 2 miles. With the latter goal, you will strive to reach it, whether it takes you 10 minutes or an hour, because you want to achieve that goal. Working hard on completing levels, rather than sitting for a set amount of time doing BrainHQ without necessarily working hard, is what helps your brain. So do whatever amount of exercise that makes you feel challenged. But try to do your trainings on consecutive days—research shows greater brain benefits when learning or training on consecutive days, rather than sporadically.

To set or change your goal or time you want to spend doing the exercises, click on your name or the arrow next to it in the upper right corner of your BrainHQ screen, select Profile, and scrolling down to “Weekly Goal” where you can change your goal. Be sure to save when you are done.

As part of one of the revisions to the Progress sections of BrainHQ, Posit Science sends a weekly progress report update email to BrainHQ users, prompting them to continue their work and push even further. The default weekly challenge (what you have set as your goal in levels that you want to achieve during the week) will ask the user to try to complete the number of levels set through their Weekly Goal setting. Sometimes a targeted weekly challenge will be given you by Posit Science such as "complete 20 Memory exercise levels". Posit Science uses many templates for different email interactions with BrainHQ users to encourage them to continue training. An additional Weekly Challenge would add another section to the weekly email they receive. If you have questions about your particular email from Posit Science, it would be best to forward an email or screenshot the page directly to their Support Team for help and an explanation. You may write directly to: support@positscience.com and include your screen shot as an attachment.

No, you are not doing harm to yourself or your brain. Quite the opposite! Jeff Zimman, co-founder of Posit Science, said that when it comes to brain training, “more is better.” The more training you do, the more you are building your cognitive reserve. Dr. Michael Merzenich said, “We have repeatedly evaluated potential negative impacts of training. NONE have been recorded. At the same time, if you find yourself terribly frustrated by a specific BrainHQ exercise, give yourself a break from its usage for awhile—and hopefully when you come back to it, you’ll make a little more progress on it.” If longer training ever bothers you (your eyes get tired, you have been sitting too long, or you feel stressed), you should stop or take a break. Breaking your exercises up into smaller lengths of time might also be a good idea. It would be worrisome if you were not being balanced in your life and including other activities in your daily routine (exercise, sleep, socialization, good nutrition, etc.).

The more you train and the more advanced you get (as in anything), it gets more difficult to make forward steps in progress, due to the difficulty of the task (think about climbing a mountain and towards the very top, having to inch your way up as it is so steep; you are still making progress and getting a good workout at the same time). When you get to the highest levels of your exercises, you will notice it is even harder to advance, because you're already at a high percentile, but that doesn't mean the brain benefits are slowing down. Rather, it is exacting even more work and concentration to make just a little progress!

BrainHQ training is adaptive to the user--the exercises are programmed to follow your skill level and keep you challenged at your personal threshold. If you feel an exercise is too difficult or too fast, you will not do as well in your responses and the program will automatically slow down or lower the difficulty level as you respond incorrectly. Once you do better, it will speed up or increase the difficulty level. It is normal to get answers incorrect. You shouldn’t be frustrated or discouraged; that is how BrainHQ finds the right level of challenge for you. If at times, you do feel too frustrated being at your threshold, take a break, or go back and visit an earlier level that was easier and slower to build up your confidence.

When you change the Difficulty Level, it does not change the exercise itself to make it more difficult (faster, more objects, etc.). What it does is keep you on that exercise in Personal Trainer until you reach a star level corresponding with the difficulty level, before it moves you forward to the next level and retires the former level. For example, if you set the Difficulty level to “Easy,” you would only need to earn 2 stars to move forward; for “Medium” (the default level), you would need to earn 3 stars; for “Hard,” you would need to earn 4 stars; and for “Expert,” you would need to earn 5 stars for BrainHQ to retire that level and move you forward.

Posit Science is aware of this request from many users and have said they will likely increase the number of levels you can set for your weekly goal in a future revision.

In the Personal Trainer, your weekly training goal is automatically set at 24 levels (the default training goal if you have not changed it). These 24 levels are divided into 3 sessions of 8 levels each. When you begin a session, it will take you toward the goal of completing 8 levels. If you want to adjust your weekly training goal, click on your name in the upper right of the BrainHQ screen and click on “Profile.” Scroll down to “Weekly Goal,” make the change, and save your change.

There are two ways you can go about training with BrainHQ:

1. Use Personal Trainer, which selects exercises for you.

2. Use Explore All Exercises, where you can select exercises for yourself.

Personal Trainer is one of the two ways you can train with BrainHQ. The Personal Trainer will select exercises for you based on a profile it builds about you as you do your exercises. It looks back on all the exercises you’ve done and determines both your strengths and your opportunities to improve, based on your performance levels in each exercise and mathematic algorithms that determines which exercises your next session should include. Personal Trainer will usually give you a mix of new levels, along with a repetition of other levels you can improve upon, and a balance of exercises so you are exposed to a good balance.

Repetition is essential to driving positive brain plasticity. All BrainHQ exercises are designed to challenge you and result in 70% to 90% correct responses. Through repetition and positive feedback for correct responses, BrainHQ trains accuracy. This is why your Personal Trainer will continue to present certain exercises to you each session. The program knows you need to continue working on this skill area to improve it. If you believe there is problem with your Personal Trainer, please reach out to your instructor who will help you check certain settings that may be affecting your program.

If you see “Level 3” for example, it means Personal Trainer has moved you to a new level and is showing you which one. If you see “Repeated Level,” Personal Trainer is having you repeat one you have already done to try to improve your performance.

There are several ways to change the way Personal Trainer handles your program. One of them is found in your Profile; the other is the Focus in Personal Trainer itself.

• Profile-Difficulty. If you click on your name in the upper right of the BrainHQ screen, it brings up a pull-down menu. Click on Profile and it will open a page with your personal account information, as well as settings you can work with that will affect how Personal Trainer presents exercises to you. One of these settings is called “Difficulty.” The Difficulty setting sets how many stars that you need to earn on a level before BrainHQ knows you are good enough and doesn’t need to bring you back to that level. The “Easy” setting would require 2 stars to move to the next level; the “Medium” setting would require 3 stars; the “Hard” setting requires 4 stars; and “Expert” will require 5 stars in each level that you attempt. Once you satisfy the level where your setting is with the required stars, Personal Trainer will retire that level and bring you to another level, so you won’t repeat it. This will move you through the program more quickly, but you won’t be getting to a higher level of performance at that time. Please note that the “Difficulty” setting does not change the exercise itself in any way (slowing it down, making it easier)—it only controls how good you have to be at that exercise before BrainHQ will retire that level. The default setting is “Medium.”

• Profile-Training Strategy. This control, called “Breadth vs. Depth”, determines how far you are going to go into an exercise before Personal Trainer stops giving you that exercise for awhile and moves you on to a new exercise. If you have it set toward the “Breadth” setting (you would like to move more quickly through the exercises before having achieved higher levels), it will reduce the amount of times you are given the exercise before moving on. If your setting is toward the “Depth” setting (you are more of a perfectionist and want to achieve a higher level before you move on), it will give you the exercise quite a bit before it moves you on to another exercise. The default setting is in the middle.

• Focus. Personal Trainer allows you to set a specific focus, or create your own custom focus. When you open Personal Trainer, click on the word “Focus” near the upper left of the starting screen. In the window that opens, you will see both Standard and Specialized Focuses from which you can choose. If you select one, your Personal Trainer will present that until you change it. Near the bottom of that page, you also have the choice of creating your own custom focus where you can select those exercises you would like presented to your by your Personal Trainer.

Each training exercise takes 1-2 minutes and may involve between 5-100 stimulus sets or turns (times the user responds to the stimulus in one exercise set). One exception is the exercise Freeze Frame, which takes longer to complete.

It is likely one way that BrainHQ challenges your brain to think differently than it normally does by switching what you would expect: the “yes” arrow to be on the right side and the “no” arrow on the left. It takes extra focus and concentration to get it right!

BrainHQ exercises are designed to make information processing in the brain faster and more accurate. With auditory exercises that use speech, Posit Science processes the speech sounds with a digital algorithm that initially stretches the speech sounds out to make them slower and to emphasize the loudest parts. This is because the difference between a "ba” sound and a “pa” sound, for example, is just a brief gap of a few tens of milliseconds. This drives a strong response in the brain and helps drive brain plasticity. As the auditory exercises get more challenging, the stretching and emphasis is removed and the speech is then compressed to make it faster than normal, which challenges the brain to speed up. This is designed to help the improvements from these exercises transfer to real-life listening situations - where you might be listening to someone speak quickly and need to process and remember what they say. A common misconception is that the processed speech is trying to make speech more intelligible, but that is not the intention. It is likely more difficult to understand than normal speech. The goal of the speech processing is to drive brain plasticity.

Read on for further detail about this from Posit Science:

"As we get older the organization of the neurons in the auditory cortex degrades, making our processing of sound and language both slower and more inaccurate. Difficulty with understanding speech in noisy environments or when someone is speaking quickly is not just a result of age related hearing loss but also a result of a decline in auditory processing by the brain. BrainHQ's auditory exercises specifically focus on training your brain to accurately distinguish between commonly confusable phonemes found in English.

To do this, a filter is applied to the voice recordings to at first emphasize the distinguishing parts of the consonant sounds and then, at higher levels, the filter is used to de-emphasize these parts of the auditory waveform, forcing your auditory cortex to process the speech with less meaningful auditory information. We have tested and trained thousands of people using this method and have been able to show 1) that younger people perform better on these exercises because their brain is processing sound more quickly and accurately, 2) that older people can improve at the exercises by training for many hours, 3) that doing this training results in improved performance of general tests of auditory memory and language processing."

Brain processing speed is the time it takes to capture information, process it, and respond to it. This ability tends to decrease with age. A person experiencing slower brain processing speed takes longer to respond to questions, complete tasks, keep track of information, and process complex information. They can experience problems in attention, memory, organization, language, and executive functions like problem-solving and decision-making. The good news is that brain speed is one of the easiest things to improve! Brain speed is a skill, so the BrainHQ exercises work hard to help users increase their brain speed through various exercises targeting that skill. Dr. Merzenich says that brain speed is a "signature operation" of the brain, so the training exercises are heavily focused on that skill. The downstream benefits of improving one’s brain speed translate to greater abilities in performing the tasks of everyday living that we all want to be able to do for ourselves.

Posit Science has not yet done research in the area of BrainHQ and the subconscious. However, they do have a recommendation--this has to do with how the subconscious may be working as you find yourself guessing during certain exercises:

"If ever a stimuli flies by too quickly for you to catch, we would encourage you to guess. In some cases users are still able to answer correctly when they are guessing. This is because the information from the stimuli has begun to process subconsciously, and by guessing or "going with your gut", you're doing your best to act on that subconscious information. BrainHQ is adaptive and we want you training at what's called your "threshold" - this is when an exercise is challenging but not so difficult that it becomes discouraging. For most exercises we want users to get about 70-80% of the questions correct and 20-30% of the questions incorrect. If you find yourself occasionally guessing or getting a few questions wrong, then this could be a sign that you're training at your threshold, which is good!"

For those interested in more information, a 2016 research article confirmed that unconscious perception is possible even with rapid and complex stimuli: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5711286/

The majority of the 29 BrainHQ exercises are not timed in the sense that you are racing the clock that gives you only so much time to answer before the next prompt is presented. On most, there is time to consider the prompt and make your selection. The exercises are not encouraging deep analysis in the sense that a mathematical word problem might, for example. They are targeting specific, fundamental brain processes to stimulate and exercise them, which in turn strengthens the brain’s ability to be sharper in higher order, complex processing and thinking.

There is no penalty for not doing a particular BrainHQ exercise. If you cannot do the exercise due to vision or hearing disabilities, you simply do those that you can do to get as many brain benefits as you possibly can. It doesn’t count against you in the sense of your recorded progress on the Progress screen. You will just notice that you won’t show the stars earned or levels completed on those exercises you are skipping. If you are opting out of an exercise simply because it is too difficult or frustrating for you at the moment, we recommend coming back to that exercise from time to time to try it again, and not completely abandoning it. You may be surprised how well you do after working out your brain in other exercises, making it stronger and more capable of tackling something that was previously very difficult for you.

It is difficult to say that one or two are the best. Rather, there are two types of exercises that tend to be foundational and very important for improving brain health and function. Those are the exercises that challenge visual and audible skills. If you prefer to focus on either or both of those exercises, you can select a focus through your Personal Trainer for either “Visual Processing” or “Auditory Processing.”

There is not a way to redo an exercise to replace a score that was already recorded. However, there are a few things you can do while still in an exercise (you haven't finished all the turns or prompts in that exercise). If you need to or want to quit the exercise before completing it, you could either:

1. Pause the exercise by clicking on the two hashmarks on the lower right toolbar within the exercise. That allows you to keep your progress and resume the exercise when you come back to it.

2. Quit the exercise before completing it by clicking on the "X" on the bottom right toolbar in the exercise. That will take you out of the exercise, but you will lose all the work you did up to that point in that exercise set. We don't recommend doing this. It will erase whatever score you were working on (like getting 1 or 2 stars to the point you quit the exercise).

Other than these two actions, you cannot control the score, reset it, or set it back. All your progress (as long as you complete each exercise set) is recorded under the Progress tab on the BrainHQ website.

Not all BrainHQ exercises use a timer that limits your time to respond. Many give you time to respond, though the exercise prompt may be quick and/or disappear. Refer to this chart to see which exercises are timed and how.

It is understandable that the BrainHQ exercises may no longer seem challenging to a long-time user who is achieving at the highest percentiles. So for someone performing at those high levels, taking a break from BrainHQ is fine because being bored with the exercises may not be a good use of time. You shouldn't be doing activities that you are bored with. That being said, you may want to come back and revisit the exercises periodically to give yourself a boost and see how you're doing. After several months break, if you see you have fallen in your performance levels, you may want to re-train to get back to where you were. If you do take a brief or prolonged break from BrainHQ, we suggest you use the time to learn something else that will be new, novel, and challenging to you. Whatever activity that will interest you, engage you, and bring a passion for life back to you, you should try. Please note: If you decide to take a break from your BrainHQ exercises, you don't necessarily need to drop the Brain Fitness class--being part of the class, engaging with others, and learning from the weekly lesson topics is excellent for your brain in keeping it challenged!

Exercises become more difficult as you get answers correct so that you are always training at a threshold of approximately 80% accuracy. If you train on a level you've already gotten five stars in, you'll still continue to push the difficulty up the more you train. The higher the stage/level you go, the more complex the stimulus becomes. However, since a level is a specific configuration of an exercise, repeating a level does not change the complexity no matter the amount of stars you achieved in that exercise.

When we present new information to the brain, our plastic brain changes. It reorganizes itself, forms new synaptic connections, strengthens existing connections, and even grows new brain cells in response to this new information. Positive brain plasticity occurs whenever something new is learned, practiced, and memorized. All learning is good, but to be most effective, three principles should guide learning:

1. Novelty. This means you should engage your brain in an activity that is different, or new to you.

2. Variety. The things you challenge your brain with should offer variety so they hold your interest and you avoid boredom.

3. Constant challenge. Activities you use to challenge your brain should always present a challenge to you.

Any learning, if novel, new, and challenging is good for the brain and should be something we try to do every day. Research has shown that some activities have a greater impact on the brain. Learning a new language or learning to play a musical instrument both stimulate many areas of the brain and have a powerful effect on brain activity and brain health.

The experience of speaking another language changes the structure of the brain and how it functions. Research shows that the left inferior parietal cortex is larger in multilingual brains than in monolingual brains. Multilingualism fine-tunes the auditory nervous system that helps juggle linguistic input and helps the multilingual person process information more efficiently and easily than someone who speaks only one language. Multilinguals possess enhanced attention and concentration abilities. They become expert at selecting relevant information and ignoring things that could distract them from a task. They have higher connectivity between the visual processing areas located at the back of their brains. Additionally, their brains are more efficient and economical, as they recruit fewer regions to perform a task.

Research has identified that an area of the hippocampus (the dentate gyrus) is one of the areas of the brain that can experience neurogenesis, or the growth of new brain cells (the other area is the olfactory bulb). Scientists suspect there are even other areas, but don't yet have the proof. We don't find any direct statements from literature or from Posit Science that states that BrainHQ enhances the growth of the hippocampus. However, there is plenty of empirical evidence showing that other activities like physical exercise and learning do perform this function. If you think of BrainHQ as a learning activity (you are constantly being challenged and surprised through the exercises), it makes sense that BrainHQ would also enhance neurogenesis. The reason is this: When we present new information to the brain, our plastic brain changes. It reorganizes itself, forms new synaptic connections, strengthens existing connections, and even grows new brain cells in response to this new information. Positive brain plasticity occurs whenever something new is learned, practiced, and memorized. All learning is good, but to be most effective, three principles should guide learning:

1. 1. 1. 1. 1. Novelty. This means you should engage your brain in an activity that is different, or new to you.

            2. Variety. The things you challenge your brain with should offer variety so they hold your interest and you avoid boredom.

            3. Constant challenge. Activities you use to challenge your brain should always present a challenge to you.

Though there is currently no direct evidence of BrainHQ helping to enhance neurogenesis in the hippocampus, we can be assured that it likely does, and that it is doing much good for our overall cognitive processes (this is substantiated by hundreds of studies and articles). To specifically focus on growing your hippocampus, you should engage in constant learning (as outlined above), as well as in consistent and challenging aerobic exercise, which stimulates growth factors that promote neurogenesis.

Here are a few articles that help explain how BrainHQ changes the brain, including the hippocampus:

• This article on the BrainHQ website talks about structural and functional changes in the brain that occur with the use of BrainHQ exercises: https://www.brainhq.com/world-class-science/published-research/physical-brain-change

• This article (a subset of the above article) from the BrainHQ website talks about the use of BrainHQ in people with Mild Cognitive Impairment, and how it improved the functionality of the hippocampus. The study did not claim that the use of BrainHQ induced neurogenesis, however, just that the neuroplasticity of the hippocampus benefitted from this cognitive training and improved in function: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3277842/

In the ACTIVE study, brain benefits were shown to last at least 5 years after the training took place. If you stop doing the BrainHQ exercises, you will retain some benefits, but you will also lose some. This is demonstrated in the BrainAQ section under the Progress tab on the BrainHQ website. When you stop training, or take a break from it, your BrainAQ points will diminish, but they can be brought back up when you resume training. These points represent your cognitive gains when you are training and losses when you are not. It is always best to keep your brain active and BrainHQ exercises are a quick, efficient, and effective way to do that. Remember, training your brain is not just about your brain health, but about its ability. Continued training helps ensure your brainspan will equal your lifespan.

Posit Science is involved in constant research going on both inside and outside the company. There are already hundreds of research articles about BrainHQ and its effects on the brain. According to Dr. Merzenich, 270 trials have already taken place, and 400 more are underway. BrainHQ is uniquely, and strongly an evidence-based brain training program. The BrainHQ website has links to information, research studies, podcasts, blogs, videos, and articles about the benefits of using BrainHQ, as well as the benefits and importance of many other healthy lifestyle activities. Posit Science also publishes a monthly newsletter that highlights recent research and findings in the field of brain health. As of this writing, six large trials on how brain training substantially deters the onset of dementia is going on and should soon be published.

No. Although doing crossword puzzles makes you think (you have to find an anagram or a synonym), you’re not making the brain faster or more accurate. For that you need to challenge it with something more like the BrainHQ exercises. Our brains need vigorous exercise, like our muscles.

You should be looking for improvements in all the areas targeted by the various categories of the BrainHQ exercises, and more. For instance:

• Attention: you should notice yourself paying better and closer attention to what is around you and taking in details you hadn't noticed before, as well as an increased ability to focus on something and ignore distractions.

• Brain Speed: you should notice an improvement in your ability to think and react faster to stimuli.

• Memory: you should notice that your memory is improving (remembering names, items on a grocery list, details of conversations, etc.).

• People Skills: you should notice you have more confidence around people as you have learned to listen to them more attentively, understand their expressions, remember things they tell you, and respond appropriately.

• Intelligence: you should notice you are able to think through and process information better, and therefore make better decisions.

• Navigation: you should notice a renewed confidence in your driving skills, more attentiveness to your surroundings, and more willingness to navigate to new areas.

The list goes on and on, and real-life benefits for each person can be different. This list is just an example of what could be changing for you as a regular and consistent user of BrainHQ.

If you truly haven't noticed any improvements in yourself, try asking someone close to you if they have. If not, then we recommend continuing with your exercises, being faithful and consistent in your exercise regimen. If you are a more casual BrainHQ user, increase how much you are doing, as you won't see the benefits you hope to with casual use (once or twice a week). Remember, even if you don't believe you are seeing benefits yet in your daily life from BrainHQ, that doesn't mean that your brain is not benefitting. Ask yourself if you are regressing in your cognitive abilities. If you are at least maintaining them, then you may want to consider your brain workout regimen as "brain health management." You are keeping your brain challenged and maintaining your cognitive abilities.

Keep working at your exercises until you do begin to notice changes. For some, it can be immediate; for others, it may take longer. Be sure to monitor your cognitive gains by using the Progress tab on the BrainHQ website. By watching your BrainAQ, as well as your percentile scores, you will notice you are making cognitive gains, even if you don't realize it.

Absolutely! Any type of learning is a powerful thing for the brain, as it encourages positive plasticity, neurogenesis, and strengthened and new synaptic connections. A more robust brain makes the efficacy of BrainHQ even better. An example: Tom Brady, the professional football quarterback who continues to astonish people by winning Superbowl games and setting records, even in his forties, is an avid user of BrainHQ. He uses it to sharpen his brain and push it to its maximum performance ability—along with his physical, nutrition, and other regimens. All together, they work to make him a superior athlete. So whatever we do to improve our brain will enhance it and enable BrainHQ to be even more effective for our brains.

BrainHQ provides continuous feedback regarding how a person is progressing throughout its use. Depending on how you approach an exercise (Personal Trainer or Exercises), a window will show you your progress after each exercise, and for Personal Trainer, at the end of your session. All work on your exercises, no matter how you accomplish it, is recorded in the Progress tab near the top of the BrainHQ webpage. When on the Progress page, four tabs give you progress information such as how long you have trained, your BrainAQ, stars earned, levels completed, and your percentile compared to other BrainHQ users your age. Under each of these tabs, you may read what they measure and how to interpret the data. Under the percentile page, you will see your gains in percentile points represented as “+” (points)—this shows how many percentile points you have increased since beginning the program.

Recently, a new feature has been added to the Home Page to help you track your progress. You will now see four icons in the center of the Home Page that give you even more insight into how you are doing with the program. These will show up after you have done at least one exercise; if you haven't done any on a particular day, only one of those icons will be visible. Read about this new feature here.

There is no requirement to monitor yourself while doing the BrainHQ program. Many tools are available in case you would like to monitor yourself—some people find it highly motivating to do so. These tools are found under the Progress tab near the top of the BrainHQ website. However, the important part is the training you are doing with the exercises in order to derive cognitive benefits. Monitoring is simply a tool available if you want to use it.

Stars are earned when each BrainHQ exercise is completed. They give you an idea of how your score compares to others who completed that level. Five stars means a score was among the best, while one star suggests you should repeat that level to improve your performance.

BrainHQ keeps track of the total number of stars earned throughout your training. Stars earned may be seen by clicking on the “Progress” tab, and then clicking on the “Stars Earned” tab. Many people find that the growing number of stars earned give them a strong sense of accomplishment and progress. This screen also shows a map of all BrainHQ exercise sets, color coded by suite, showing the highest number of stars they have earned for each exercise set. You can use the map to identify exercise sets where you have not yet earned many stars, and click on the map to train on that exercise set.

A level is earned each time a BrainHQ exercise set is completed. If that exercise set is repeated multiple times, it counts as multiple levels completed. BrainHQ keeps track of the total number of levels completed throughout all of a person’s training. Levels completed may be seen by

clicking on the “Progress” tab, and then clicking on the “Levels Complete” tab.

Performance medals are a way to track your progress and incentivize you in doing your exercises. Medals are earned based on the total number of stars earned for the exercise set. Typically, if all the sets show approximately three stars, a person will have earned the bronze medal, four stars will earned the silver medal, and a mix of four and five stars will earn the gold medal.

BrainHQ records the user’s baseline (or starting point) at each level of every exercise and calculates the user’s personal progress from the baseline. When you complete an exercise you have selected through the “Exercise” icon on the home screen (or using the menu on the bottom of each page), a small window will appear to show you how many stars you have earned and give you the option to repeat, move forward, or leave the exercise.

While using Personal Trainer, when you complete an exercise set, it will ask you to repeat the exercise until you get a total of 10 stars. You might be able to do that in a few sets, or it may take you a lot longer. It is adaptive to your threshold; if you need to repeat it many times to get to 10 stars, it just means you needed to work out that area more than perhaps another area where you quickly get to 10 stars.

All progress is recorded under the Progress tab near the top and is divided into different views: Days Trained, Stars Earned, Levels Completed, and Percentile. You can read about each one if you click on the tabs under Progress and scroll down each page.

Yes, plans are in the works for this to happen, but it will take time for it to be fully developed and added. In May of 2020, Apple approved a changed on the BrainHQ app for the iPhone and iPad. There has been some progress information added, but it doesn’t look like the Progress tab on the BrainHQ website—it is constrained due to the nature of mobile devices. You will see some pop-ups or menus with progress data on what you may have done during that session, or congratulations on making progress.

About once a year, Posit Science does an update on percentile point comparisons for the purpose of making them more accurate. One reason they do this is because they may substantially change an exercise to make it more responsive to how users are performing, and need to adjust the percentiles to more closely reflect the data of all the users. The scores may go up or down. Your personal percentile score, in this instance, is not changing because you have changed; it is changing because the people you’re being compared to have changed. This could include both the number of people you’re being compared to, as well as the mix of users who may be either better than or not as good as you. The goal is to keep it updated to keep your percentile as accurate as possible.

Below is further information direct from Posit Science on why percentiles change from time to time:

"There are a few things that impact percentile. Training into a new bracket & a data update.

Entering a new bracket (meaning individuals of the same percentile):

Having your percentile change is a common experience for many users. When you first start training with BrainHQ your percentile score includes everyone who has ever trained on those first few levels you completed. Some users who are new to the program have trouble doing those levels, and as a result, they score poorly. This in turn will boost the percentiles for other people who scored well on those exercises. As you continue to train with BrainHQ your percentile may go down because the users that were having trouble early on didn’t continue their training. That means that your scores are now being compared to people that continued training and are now working their way through more challenging levels.

Data update:

That being said, from time to time it is necessary for our Product Development team to push an update to the server that impacts all BrainHQ users. This can change percentile. This happens when we gain a data set which wasn't directly accounted for previously. That can happen for a great number of reasons. We do try to mitigate this necessity but from time to time our ethical devotion to accurate data can impact user percentile ranking."

Percentile scores are for those who want to compare how they’re doing to other BrainHQ users their age. Percentile scores are found under the “Progress” tab, and then under the “Percentile” tab. Users can also compare to others of different ages by using the age slider. A percentile shows a user where they are compared to others their age. For example, a person may have an 80% percentile score (meaning that their performance on all the exercise sets they have done is, on the average, higher than the scores of 80% of other BrainHQ users their age on those exercise sets).

As a user does more new exercises sets, their percentile score may decrease. When that person first tries a new exercise set, they might get a typical (50th percentile) score on the exercise set. This will slightly lower their overall percentile score. As a person moves onto higher and higher exercise sets, the BrainHQ users that person is compared to typically have higher and higher scores. Not every user gets to the higher exercise sets, and those that do have typically done a lot of training! What might be a good score at a lower exercise set might be an only average score on a higher exercise set. As a result, a person who is at the 80% percentile as they start BrainHQ may find their percentile decreasing as they move forward in BrainHQ because they are being compared to an increasingly elite group.

Percentile scores are a good choice for a person who is competitive and is comfortable comparing their scores to others their age. If you find yourself becoming discouraged by your percentile score, remember that continued training will raise your score. It may be better to refocus on the BrainAQ progress metric.

The BrainHQ Activity Quotient (BrainAQ) represents overall gains from training with BrainHQ. A simple chart of BrainAQ is on the BrainHQ homepage and a more detailed look at BrainAQ may be seen by clicking on the “Progress” tab at the top of the page. When you first begin BrainHQ, the activity quotient starts at zero. Each time a new training level is completed, your BrainAQ will tick upward. As your performance improves, BrainAQ will increase proportionally, reflecting cognitive gains from training. If your threshold on a level slips, your BrainAQ may decrease, but you can always bring it back up with further training. BrainAQ will also decrease slowly over time if you stop training, because the brain needs ongoing stimulation to stay sharp. The more times each training level is repeated, the slower those gains wear off —reflecting the benefits of intense practice. You can always bring your quotient back up by revisiting levels that you haven’t completed in a while. There’s no maximum score—the more you train, the higher the BrainAQ will go.

BrainAQ scores and points are simply points and are not related to any particular cognitive score. Scores that increase represent more progress and better performance improvements over time, and scores going down represent lack of training. You should not try to compare your scores with others, and there is no particular score that is “bad” or “good.” What’s “good” is a growing score, reflecting ongoing training and performance improvements. You will generally see graph line representing your BrainAQ points going up as you train regularly, start new levels, or improve on existing levels. You will see a slow decline in your score as you take a break from training, or fail to do as well as you did in the past. However, the decline is slow, showing that the brain benefits you have already accrued wear off slowly, showing you have built cognitive reserve. When you get to a point where it levels off, that is okay, as it shows you have built a good cognitive reserve and are maintaining it.

BrainAQ can help you track your own progress and reassure you that you are using BrainHQ correctly. The message it reinforces is to train regularly, and if you take a break for a while, return to training to boost your score. It can help show that your hard work is paying off.

Getting “stuck” at a certain level of proficiency is common for many BrainHQ users. It means that you are currently working at your threshold and are not yet ready to move forward. Remember, the BrainHQ exercises are adaptive and designed to keep you training at your threshold (when an exercise is challenging but not so difficult that it becomes discouraging). The program makes sure you don't get all the answers right, so your brain can remain challenged. For most exercises, it will allow you to get about 70-80% correct, and you will get 20-30% incorrect. How you get over the “hump” is to simply continue working your brain out with that exercise (and all the others—they all help build brain power). If you do, you will eventually make it over that hump, and you will feel wonderful that you did! Your brain will release reward chemicals and make you feel good since you have achieved something that was very difficult for you—through work and persistence.

BrainHQ users often get to a certain point and plateau for awhile. That doesn't mean that they are not benefitting their brain by continuing to do the training exercises. If a user feels they are not making progress, they should consider if they are regressing in their exercises, or getting worse in their cognitive abilities as they faithfully continue their exercise program. If they aren't, then the user should perhaps consider their daily brain workout regimen as "brain health management." They are keeping the brain challenged and maintaining what they have, and should continue working until gains begin to manifest again. A few places to keep an eye on that may help a user see that cognitive gains are being made include the BrainAQ score (Progress tab), as well as the percentile score and changes (recorded at the top left on the percentile tab of Progress).

(Answered by Dr. Michael Merzenich)

"Recent studies have provided compelling evidence that shows that brain volumes, connectivity, and brain function in MCI patients can be restored to a high-normal status with regular brain training in this form—and that these neurological changes impact PHYSICAL health in ways that indicate that you’ll live longer. Being faithful to your exercises is a VERY good idea.

In individuals with an MCI diagnosis, it has appeared to be important that you not ‘let up’ on training, because studies have shown that regression in neurological function almost immediately follows a relaxation of training—while a continuation in regular training results in a slow, steady, continuous elevation in neurological function. The neurological reason for that regression in MCI patients when they pause their brain exercises is unclear. You are doing EXACTLY the right thing in adopting your BrainHQ training as a regular habit. It is precisely what I would do, were I walking in your shoes."

Settings for a computer display (larger, smaller, brighter, more contrast, dimmer at night, etc.) are unique to each user. You could try setting your screen on a dimmer setting in the evening and see how you do with your BrainHQ exercises. There may be some (particularly the audible exercises) where it won’t matter as much, but there may be some visual exercises that could be a little more difficult to train with if you use a low light setting. It is a matter of trying it out to see how it works for you. One suggestion for those who are in front of screens for prolonged periods is to consult with your optometrist about getting blue light-blocking glasses that can help with this problem, or using eyedrops that may rehydrate your eyes.

Although BrainHQ cannot change a person’s actual vision or hearing status, it can change performance abilities in both areas by targeting brain speed in processing the raw information. Watch a video from the BrainHQ website about how training benefits hearing.

(Answered by Dr. Michael Merzenich)

“Yes. We are also trying to prevent a progress to dementia in this population, who are at higher risk for its onset.” See this article about a research study showing various improvements in Alzheimer’s participants using BrainHQ exercises.

Dr. Merzenich has taught extensively about the power of brain plasticity, and that most any brain can experience improvement with consistent and targeted effort. BrainHQ can enhance this recovery. People who have had a stroke and incurred damage to the brain can benefit because BrainHQ exercises stimulate and promote plasticity, which is the process needed for the damaged brain to rebuild itself through structural and

functional changes and adaptations. All exercises in the program are important and can help, but the stroke survivor may want to begin with the

Attention and Brain Speed exercises.

One powerful example of how the brain can reorganize itself and relearn functions it has lost is found in the book “The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science.” Author Norman Doidge tells of a surgeon in his 50s who suffered a stroke, which left his left arm paralyzed. During his rehabilitation, his good right arm and hand were immobilized, and he was set to cleaning tables. The task was, of course, impossible at first. Then slowly, and with persistence, the paralyzed arm “remembered” how to move. The surgeon learned to write again, and even to play tennis again. The functions of this man’s brain that were destroyed in the stroke had transferred themselves to healthy regions.

Posit Science did a study with the Mayo Clinic and USC and found that BrainHQ users, whether they had no disability, or had hearing problems, got the same improvement in memory from using the exercises. And many other studies have shown that people with various abilities have received significant brain benefits from using the BrainHQ exercises.

For people with mild to moderate vision loss that have difficulty using some of the visual exercises, they could focus on auditory exercises that don’t necessarily require good vision. It is a good idea for people with failing vision to try and compensate with a stronger auditory system, so focusing on the auditory exercises (Personal Trainer has an Auditory focus available) is a good practice. If a user wears corrective lenses, they should use them when doing the BrainHQ exercises. Currently, for someone who is entirely blind, BrainHQ will not be usable for them. This is an area they are working on for the future using assistive technology to make the exercises available to blind people.

Similarly, for those with severe hearing loss, a good strategy would be to focus on visual exercises (there is a Visual focus in Personal Trainer) to build up visual acuity in order to partially compensate for their hearing loss. If a user wears hearing aids or assistive hearing devices, they should use them while using BrainHQ.

For people with Parkinson’s disease, there is an issue with having tremors and not being able to control responses on the keyboard or screen. However, each person is quite different in their abilities to use a computer. Some are able to use BrainHQ by using assistive devices like differently configured mice or joysticks, which help them have better control while using their hands. Some are able to change the settings on their computer so the sensitivity on the keyboard or mouse is not as high so an errant movement doesn’t cause the mouse to jump across the screen. Others use a tablet or iPad as touching or tapping the screen is easier than using a mouse. Generally, if a person with Parkinson’s is able to use the computer and browse the web, they should be able to work with BrainHQ to some degree.

Note: Sometimes a user may experience frustration because they feel they cannot hear or see the exercises well enough. At times, the technical settings on the device they are using have been inadvertently altered, so it is always a good idea to check those first to rule them out. Check the volume—perhaps it was turned down by mistake. Check the view mode for your screen—perhaps it is not on full screen mode. Use the Accessibility (Mac) or Ease of Use (PC) settings to alter how you use your mouse, trackpad, keyboard, and how the display looks.

(Answered by Dr. Michael Merzenich)

“Your brain is plastic. It can STILL be stronger and healthier, even as your hearing is failing you, and the tinnitus won’t stop. Again, this is a call to action. Change your life habits. Take the advice I offer in Soft-Wired. TAKE THIS CLASS SERIOUSLY. You’ll get better, and be safer, longer."

(Answered by Dr. Michael Merzenich)

"Prevention is the primary goal. Making the most with the damaged brain, given that the damage is now in place is a secondary (but still important) goal."

(Answered by Dr. Michael Merzenich)

“In practice, it drives positive benefits in about half of diagnosed patients. Most of the remainder struggle greatly or are incapable of getting engaged in using it. We’re working on strategies that would extend its usage to more of these moderate-to-advanced AD patients.”

There is not one answer to this question. The answer is dependent on the type and severity of brain function loss, the reason for the loss, the overall health of the person, and the person’s ability to fully engage in BrainHQ exercises. The answer would be unique to each person experiencing loss. In general, if a person was able to fully engage in BrainHQ exercises (as well as all the other factors that enhance brain health and recovery such as nutrition, sleep, exercise, etc.), participating in regular and consistent braining training using BrainHQ can certainly help speed the recovery from loss of brain function. The more a person, especially one working toward functional restoration, can work on the exercises, the better. If they can work 30 minutes daily, or even an hour, and do so on consecutive days, that would speed the process of recovery and functionality. Depending on their capabilities, the most time a person is able to spend on training, the better.

BrainHQ can be accessed from most Internet-connected devices. It is offered as a web app on computers and mobile devices, and also as native Android and Apple apps. Because it is stored in the cloud, a user can move easily from one device to another.

You are always welcome to contact your instructors for immediate assistance with any of your questions or challenges. You are also encouraged to contact Posit Science directly through the BrainHQ website about your questions. They love to hear directly from BrainHQ users, and appreciate your questions and feedback for them. They are happy you are interested enough in the program to ask questions! You can ask a question by clicking on “Help” near the upper left of most screens while in BrainHQ. This will bring you to a web page full of information you can explore by topic, a search feature, and a link to write them an email (Submit a Request). When you write Posit Science, please be specific. For example, if you are having trouble with an exercise, let them know the name of the exercise, the stage, and level you are working on. That information is found near the bottom of each exercise page. Once you submit a question, you will receive an immediate response from Posit Science letting you know your request has been received. Their answer normally comes within just a few hours. Though the technical support staff receive hundreds of inquiries per day, they are quick to answer. If you need further information, simply reply to their response and ask a follow-up question.

First of all, make sure you have logged in using the correct email and password. The email is the one you used to register for the class (it is on

your Student Portal), and the password is the one the Brain Fitness instructors assigned to you when you began the program. It is not the same as your Student Portal password. Your BrainHQ password will look something like this: spring21, fall2020, summer20, spring20, etc. It reflects the semester you first began the program. It has no capital letters and no spaces. Please do not change this password. It makes it easier to tell you what it is if you forget it. If you have put the incorrect password in more than 3 times, the program will lock you out for 24 hours, and you will need to wait before you try again. If you are still having trouble, please contact your instructor. Watch this fun video that helps explain the difference between your Student Portal password and your BrainHQ password.

There could be any number of reasons why you may be experiencing trouble:

• Internet connection. Are you plugged into the wall for your Internet, or are you using a wireless connection (WiFi)? If you are plugged in, check the connection to make sure it is secure, or try replacing the cable (sometimes they go bad). If your connection is wireless, your signal may not be strong and is dropping at times and could be causing the exercises to stop or freeze. One way to check that is to see if that happens while you are visiting other web pages. When you browse through other content, see if you are able to navigate without any problems.

• Check your computer and operating system. How old are they? If you are using an older system, it may not be able to handle the content that comes through with BrainHQ. Try the exercises on a different device (another computer, laptop, tablet, or phone) to see if that might be the issue. If it works well using another device, that might point to your computer and operating system as the culprit.

• Update your software. Sometimes updating your software will take care of compatibility and function problems. Go to the Settings and look to see if it is asking for you to update the software. That might do the trick.

• Pay attention to where you place your fingers on the keyboard. Sometimes we may accidentally hit the wrong keys and it takes us somewhere else without being aware we did that. Check the sensitivity of your keyboard (use the Accessibility (Mac) or Ease of Access (PC) feature).

• Change browsers. Google Chrome is optimized for the BrainHQ exercises. If not using that, try it and the exercises may start working again.

• Posit Science. If everything else is working (you’ve checked all of the above), it may be that Posit Science has some temporary glitches with the program. You may contact them directly via the "Help" icon near the top left of your BrainHQ screen. Let them know what is happening and try to provide detail, including your device type and operating system. Typically, they will send instructions on what to do to fix the problem.

An inability to hear or see objects in the BrainHQ exercises may be due to several factors:

• Changes in your device settings

• A need for environmental alterations while using BrainHQ

• Your improvement within an exercise

Changes in your device settings: Sometimes the technical settings on the device you are using to access BrainHQ have been inadvertently altered. For example, perhaps the volume was turned down by mistake, or you are not viewing the exercise in full-screen mode. These are things that are easily changed.

Environmental alternations: It is important to be aware of how to sit in front of a computer to optimize your view of the computer screen. Remember to practice proper ergonomics. Also, you should evaluate the environment in which you are using your BrainHQ exercises. Your surroundings should be as distraction-free as possible—do your exercises in a location and at a time when you are least likely to be disturbed or interrupted. Consider turning off other devices while using BrainHQ so you can fully concentrate on the exercises.

Your improvement. You may attribute your difficulty in seeing objects or hearing sounds in an exercise to something wrong, but it might be that something is right! As you progress in your exercises and your threshold moves higher and higher, the objects and the sounds occur more quickly and require that you focus even harder to hear and see them. It is a sign that you are doing very well!

The user profile is not available at this time on mobile devices; neither is most of the data under the Progress section.

For some, doing your BrainHQ exercises on an iPad can present a challenge because it has a smaller screen area than a desktop computer or laptop. If you're having trouble seeing the exercises on your iPad, there are a few things you can do:

1. If you are accessing BrainHQ via the web on your iPad (not using an App, but using a browser to go to www.brainhq.com), try enlarging the screen using the Full Screen icon that is found in the bottom right of the screen on the exercise toolbar.

2. If you are not using the App on your iPad, try downloading it to try it out. It looks different from the web version but is optimized for the iPad. It is free to download at the App Store, which should appear on your iPad desktop as one of the icons.

3. If you are accessing BrainHQ on your iPad by using the BrainHQ App, there is not a Full Screen icon on the toolbar at the
bottom. The App already has the exercise optimized to the full screen.

4. Another thing you can try is to go to your Settings on your iPad, look for Accessibility, and try out a few of the options offered
there to see if these help (Zoom or Magnifier, for example). Experiment with these to see if they make a difference in

your viewing ability.

5. If none of these suggestions work, you can also contact Posit Science directly to ask their advice. Do this by going to your
profile on the iPad, clicking on it, then clicking on the word "Help" that shows up on the tool bar in the middle of the page. Or
if you're on the web version (not the App), click on "Help" in the upper left corner of the homepage and then click “Submit
Help Request.” Here you can explain the issue.

6. If you have tried all these suggestions and still find the exercises just too small to see on your iPad, try switching to a laptop
or desktop computer. This would offer you a much larger screen to work with and would likely resolve the issue.

The scientists at Posit Science often have new ideas or concepts for exercises. One special area of interest is building up the social cognition area (People Skills) as the brain skills targeted in this area have great value as we interact with other people. There is interest in using new technology with digital faces and expressions to help us read and understand each other’s emotions. There is also interest in making some exercises interactive where the software uses speech recognition and understands the users spoken answers. However there is no immediate plan to develop any of these into exercises that will be added to the existing BrainHQ lineup of exercises. Before a new exercise ever gets to the web, Posit Science likes to conduct clinical trials to show evidence that the exercise does have real-life brain benefits. That takes time. In the meantime, Posit Science focuses on making the existing exercises even better and more compelling for users, and increasing their efficacy in improving brain health, as well as improving the Progress data so users can more easily track their goals so they will stick with them.

One of the changes Posit Science would like to make in the BrainHQ software in the future is to improve the progress data to help the user understand if they are doing enough, or doing it in the right way. They would like to make the data more meaningful to the user rather than just seeing the completed levels, or stars, or percentiles. They would like users to better understand their goals, not only in the sense of levels per week. Are they really doing better? Giving more metrics about the gains you have had compared to six months ago, or a year ago, etc. that would give you a better sense of real progress.

Posit Science loves the students in the Brain Fitness program in San Diego! This model of using BrainHQ, built into an educational program (Brain Fitness), began with Pat Mosteller who researched it, contacted Posit Science, and worked with them to bring it to the seniors of our community for free. Posit Science loves this model and would like to see more of this implemented elsewhere. They would at least love to see a buddy-system for users who don’t have what we do in SDCCE, so they have some type of friend to help motivate them while using the program.

BrainHQ exercises are meant to address one part of our quest to live brain-healthy lifestyles. Their aim is to mentally challenge the brain through targeted, stimulating exercises that set off a cascade of brain-healthy responses. Other everyday activities that will contribute to a healthier brain are exercise, good nutrition, adequate sleep, socialization, and managing stress levels.

(Answered by Dr. Michael Merzenich)

“I am not an expert in this area. There are a half-dozen or more supplements that have been shown to have benefits in controlled trials. Turmeric and fish oil extracts are cases in point. My advice: Go to the web and look for evidence that RCTs (random-assigned controlled trials) support supplement efficacy. If you can’t find any such evidence, be suspicious. I am impressed by the meat-ax approach for supplement usage applied by Dale Bredesen, a former UCSF professor who I have known for many years. He does a chemical evaluation of your status at an older age, and on the basis of your ‘chemical profile’, supplements your body chemistry. In parallel, he has people work at BrainHQ and ‘clean up’ environment and health issues. He has very good outcomes in high-risk individuals—but has not yet sorted out exactly where the main benefits come from.”

(Answered by Dr. Michael Merzenich)

“It’s largely (mostly) hype. A single study demonstrated modest effects—and downplayed significant side effects. By contrast (just to cite another example), BrainHQ has been shown to drive positive brain changes in >200 controlled outcomes trials. The manufacture of this supplement has been a subject of a number of actions by the FDA and FTC for making false claims.”

(Answered by Dr. Michael Merzenich)

“Evidence supporting its efficacy is lacking. BrainHQ (specifically, the Freeze Frame exercise) over a 12-hour training period increased brain acetylcholine levels by >10%. Highly significant changes in ACh expression were recorded in a number of key forebrain areas. This is a far stronger effect than that recorded by taking citicholine. On the other hand, there is a long history of anecdotal evidence that this supplement might have positive impacts, and I know of no evidence that it can have negative impact. My single worry is that increasing the levels of an ACh precursor could result in the down-regulation of natural ACh production. This possibility should be investigated.”

(Answered by Dr. Michael Merzenich)

“It’s a call to action. TAKE BRAIN HEALTH EXERCISES AND CHANGE YOUR LIFESTYLE TO GROW BRAIN HEALTH MORE SERIOUSLY. WITHOUT DELAY.”

Yes. BrainHQ is a web-based program and is available anywhere a person has access to the Internet, anywhere in the world. To sign up for it, a person can go to www.brainhq.com and click on “Subscribe” to receive full access to the exercises. There is a monthly fee. As a student in the Brain Fitness class, you receive access to the BrainHQ exercises for free.

According to Dr. Michael Merzenich, music does not count as “noise” in the brain (unless it is irritating or unpleasant to the listener). However, he counts “white noise,” which we sometimes use as a distraction to sleep, or other distracting and competing noise that tends to confuse the brain and over activate it, as "noise." If you enjoy listening to music while working or studying, and you find it enhances your efforts, it is fine to use it.

Absolutely! Teaching something to someone else is one of the best ways for a person to learn. And learning is something we ought to be doing constantly, for the rest of our lives. Lifelong learning keeps the brain active, challenged, and growing.

According to Posit Science, when it comes to memory, some forgetfulness is completely normal. For example, there are proactive/retroactive interference curves and primacy and recency effects (read the articles linked to these terms for excellent information about both). Aside from those well-known findings in the memory literature (along with many others), it's also possible to have additional difficulty with organizing information into long-term memory, or difficulty retrieving memories. If a person re-reads the books they read earlier, then the general storyline should be familiar to them (suggesting that they aren't forgetting them entirely). It's difficult to pinpoint the exact reason(s) why this type of forgetfulness happens, but hopefully this provides some context and possible theories. There are several books that may be of interest (e.g. "The Seven Sins of Memory" by Daniel Schacter; and "The Memory Illusion" by Elizabeth Shah).

Posit Science does not currently provide an internal user forum for the BrainHQ program. If a forum exists where users discuss BrainHQ, they are not aware of it.

Though we're all different, it is generally not a good idea to use BrainHQ just before bedtime as it stimulates the brain and brain chemicals. It also means you're looking at blue light, which suppresses the production of melatonin, a hormone that promotes sleepiness. Because sleep is so critical to good brain health, a person should practice good sleep hygiene--habits that prepare a person for good, quality sleep; this is not the ideal time to use BrainHQ. The BrainHQ exercises work best when users can focus and concentrate on the exercises. If a person is using the exercises near bedtime, once their attention starts slipping, they should definitely stop and just go to sleep. Or if a person is using BrainHQ as a wind-down activity before bedtime, the user should use it for a short period only before retiring for the night.

The mechanisms behind the brain's short-term inability to retrieve a word--"retrieval failure"--are theoretical in nature, as most of what we currently know about memory is theory. However, several of those theories seem plausible and helpful in understanding why this may happen. The following articles and information shed light on these theories:

• A short chapter in Lumen Learning (an online educational resource) addresses this topic well. One of the suggestions in this chapter is that the cues to a memory are decayed (the neural connections) and therefore difficult to retrieve.

• This article talks about retrieval failure in the sense that information is in the long-term memory, but cannot be accessed due to lack of retrieval cues (that section is further down in the article).

• This research article talks about preparation for later information retrieval appearing to occur at the time of information acquisition (in other words, the more context and sensory information is included in a new memory, the easier it will be to retrieve later on).

A little about the exercise:

• It has 5 turns per exercise set

• It is not timed

• The score is the number of instructions you can follow

Why is True North so difficult?

True North falls within one of the more difficult categories of exercises. Originally, True North was designed to be a memory exercise, much like To-Do-List Training, with increasing complex sequences of things to do. It really is a memory exercise as much as it is a navigation exercise. True North can be difficult for some for several reasons: the user needs to remember the directions given (memory challenge), figure out the compass orientation at each station (navigation challenge), and later in the exercises, remember the names of the train stops also (memory challenge), which themselves are difficult to discern due to the speech synthesis used in the exercise (audio cortex challenge). The reason the phrases and sounds are often difficult to discern is intentional by design. The exercise is trying to improve the accuracy of your hearing by bringing in sounds where it is difficult to discern the differences. The station names were chosen to emphasize those distinctions, so they are, by design, meant to be challenging. It may be helpful to think of True North as a listening exercise and focus on that. If True North (or any BrainHQ exercise) becomes too frustrating, we suggest leaving it for awhile and working on other exercises. You may want to focus on the first four categories of exercises that can help build your brain strength in more fundamental (and easier ways), and later come back to the Navigation category.

Read on for further details from Posit Science:

"If you are having trouble distinguishing which consonant sounds are being said, you may want to return to the Sound Sweeps and Fine Tuning exercises to practice recognizing pitch and identifying similar consonant sounds. True North is one of the more complex exercises that draws on the auditory skills you have been training for in similar exercises such as Sound Sweeps, Fine Tuning, and In the Know.

As we get older the organization of the neurons in the auditory cortex degrades, making our processing of sound and language both slower and more inaccurate. Difficulty with understanding speech in noisy environments or when someone is speaking quickly is not just a result of age related hearing loss but also a result of a decline in auditory processing by the brain. BrainHQ's auditory exercises specifically focus on training your brain to accurately distinguish between commonly confusable phonemes found in English.

To do this, a filter is applied to the voice recordings to at first emphasize the distinguishing parts of the consonant sounds and then, at higher levels, the filter is used to de-emphasize these parts of the auditory waveform, forcing your auditory cortex to process the speech with less meaningful auditory information. We have tested and trained thousands of people using this method and have been able to show 1) that younger people perform better on these exercises because their brain is processing sound more quickly and accurately, 2) that older people can improve at the exercises by training for many hours, 3) that doing this training results in improved performance of general tests of auditory memory and language processing.

The sounds in both True North and Fine Tuning push the brain to rebuild its capacity to store and retrieve very significant but hard-to-distinguish sounds. It represents the second step on the stairway to robust language."

A little about the exercise:

• It has 25 turns per exercise set

• It is scored in milliseconds (the lower the better)

• It is timed by the limited amount of time objects are available on the screen

Can you slow down or freeze Right Turn?

There is no way to freeze or stop Right Turn so you can take more time to look at the prompts and make a decision. The exercise is designed to improve your spatial rotation skills, and to do so with an element of speed, so you are able (in real life) to make these decisions more quickly and effectively. As in all exercises, Right Turn is designed to respond to your level of skill. If you are having a hard time and not selecting the correct responses, the exercise will automatically slow down and get simpler. When you are quicker and more accurate in your responses, it will continue to move you forward to your threshold of ability.

A little about the exercise:

• It has 75 turns per exercise set

• It is timed (limited amount of time to respond)

• It is scored in milliseconds (the lower the number the better, meaning you are responding more and more quickly)

The various stages and levels offer different exercise stimuli. One of the more difficult stimuli is called "Rock, Paper, Scissors," based on the childhood game many used to play. However, not everyone played this game and they are unfamiliar with the hand signs as well as what beats each sign. Our advice for this is to have some fun and get familiar with this game by playing it with a friend, family member, or children until you become familiar with it. Rock, Paper, Scissors is found in Stage 1, Level 3-1 and 3-2.

Watch this one minute video that visually explains how to play the game "Rock, Paper, Scissors." Instructor Pey-Lih Littler created a graphic to help understand this also. Access it here.

A little about the exercise:

• It has 32 turns per exercise set

• It is not timed

• The original sound can be repeated until you are ready to begin

• The score is measured as a similarity score, which is represented by a number. The larger the similarity score, the closer (in Hertz) you are able to identify the different tones.

• If you answer the prompt incorrectly, the correct tone will play and the correct choice will be shown

The Hear, Hear exercise is a problem for me. I have severe tinnitus and the high pitch of some of the sessions is actually painful. What can I do?

If you find an exercise impossible to do due to a hearing disability, especially if it is causing you pain, you should retire that exercise (do not do it and delete it from your Personal Trainer program). There are other BrainHQ exercises that also target auditory processing that can give you similar benefits.

A little about the exercise:

• It has 5 turns per exercise set

• It is not timed

• It is scored with a number representing the complexity level achieved

I have a problem with the speeds of the conversations in the exercise “In the Know.” Sometimes they are very fast, and other times very slow. Why can’t they be at a normal speed?

The speech in the BrainHQ exercise “In the Know” (as in many other exercises) has been digitally stretched and emphasized in the first levels to better engage the brain in the auditory processing component of the task. Processed speech is more difficult to understand than normal speech, so the goal of speech processing in the exercise is to drive brain plasticity. Later levels of “In the Know” use normal speech, and some have compressed rapid speech. The exercise designers processed the speech sounds with a digital algorithm that stretched the sounds out to make them slower or compressed the speech to make it faster than normal. These techniques challenge the brain to refine the skills of hearing the basic components of human speech, including when that speech is faster than normal (as it is sometimes in real life). The improvements you make in this exercise are designed to transfer to real listening situations where you might be listening to someone speak at various speeds and clarity.

• For multiple targets a la balls, fish & jelly fish, pick the "group" most closely clustered together or in a line. That makes it easier to track the cluster plus a straggler. Works for up to 5 targets. Barry Hynum

• 7th level: focus on the rear wheels which have the highest contract. That allows soft focus to work better picking up the 66 sign. (The convertible top does not stand out as well against the background). Barry Hynum

• Memorize the target differences. When the picture goes by too fast, focus on the center w/ a soft peripheral focus to get a visual snapshot like a camera. Then allow picture to develop a bit & the target to materialize from the periphery. That helps me get the targets w/ super fast snapshots. (Don't look around... not enough time.) Barry Hynum

• Stage 2, Level 1-2

  • Use index finger from both hands. Left for left pointing. Right for right pointing.

  • Carefully read the instructions! They SWITCH side on you!! YES, means something different each level.

  • NO STRATEGY! Just brute force/speed but the use of BOTH index fingers helps. Use of both right & left index fingers seems stimulating... less "brutish" use of brain function.

Barry Hynum

• Memorize the target differences. When the picture goes by too fast, focus on the center w/ a soft peripheral focus to get a visual snapshot like a camera. Then allow picture to develop a bit & the target to materialize from the periphery. That helps me get the targets w/ super fast snapshots. (Don't look around... not enough time.) Barry Hynum

• 7^th Level: split the screen in half. Snapshot top & bottom quickly. Rely on peripheral vision to spot the different bird. (EXTEMELY SUBTLE DIFFERENCE). Barry Hynum

• 8^th Level: start in the corner w/ the worst contrast then circle through the next worst areas. Do the highest contrast areas last more as a snapshot. Barry Hynum

• Pick the 3 matching butterflies out of 5 in succession. Make sure you get 2 matching from the last 4 to appear in soft focus then go back using soft focus snapshot memory to get the 3rd. Barry Hynum

• For tone tracking, when it is super fast, the rise or fall on the tone is beyond hearing for me. I focus on the single note. Is it a high or low note. Barry Hynum

• 8th Level: Close your eyes during the sound sweeps! Allows better resolution of directionality! Vision interferes w/ sound resolution. Barry Hynum

• 8th Level: Focus just above the sweep screen. Allows better resolution of directionality. Peripheral vision is better at picking up directionality! Barry Hynum

• Stage 3 Level 1-1: Diagonal presentation. Focus on the upper right corner of the box to let peripheral vision pick up the sweep directions. Barry Hynum

• 2^nd Level: Use the 1^st letter of each card label to assemble an acronym. If 2 letters match, use the full label in place of the letter for one. Barry Hynum

• 6th Level: Up to 7 cards to match:

  1. Pick a geometric pattern of cards to memorize.

  2. It seems easier to remember the last 2 cards by full card "name." Barry Hynum

• 2nd and 5th Levels: Get/snapshot--memorize the first 2-3 then the last:

  • NOT enough time to repeat out loud

  • Enough time to get 1st letter or sound of the syllable. Barry Hynum

• 3^rd Level: Repeat the target objects as they arise out loud, repeat all in sequence each time an object gets added to the list. Adds auditory memory to visual memory. Repeating the target object out loud helps to recall the objects in sequence. Barry Hynum

• 5th Level: Object-letter combinations:

  1. Memorize the object 1st then the letter

  2. Often the letter doesn't matter but letters seems to register easier. Barry Hynum

• Stage 1, Level 1-1, 1-2, and 2-1 (works for circled patterns):

  • Begin w/ the location of 1 then geo-locate 2

  • You can track the 1 ball w/ the cursor (follow w/ mouse)

  • Try to keep track of 1 & 2 as you try to assemble geometric patterns as the next numbers appear

• Stage 1, Level 3-2 (jumbled):

  • • You can track the 1 ball w/ the cursor (follow w/ mouse)

    • Geometric patterns don’t work for jumbled balls

Barry Hynum

• General:

  • The balls w/ numbers move so I use geometric angles to track the numeric sequence in earlier levels. Where do the numbers occur as angles from the number 1

  • When there's 2 circle rotating in opposite directions, it's easiest for me to use geometric angles from numeric 1.

  • Later levels the balls & numeric sequence gets jumbled up. I still track geometric angles

  • In all cases I track angles from the number 1. I track the number 1 when it occurs by placing the cursor on it & track the 1 ball.

Barry Hynum

• • Stage 1, Level 1-1 -Level 1-3 (Two signs) 99%

    • Notice that the orientation of the signs ALWAYS STARTS vertical (top up). Then as the grid rotates you only need to track the POSITION of the target cell versus the Known Position cell. When the grid stops rotating/flipping, the target will still have the same orientation or directionality as the Known Position. Known position (KP) top pointing left, target will also have a top pointing left. KP top pointing right, target will also have top pointing right. KP top pointing down, target will also have top pointing down.

  • Stage 1, Level 2-1 (Two signs, not vertically oriented) 100%

    • Orientation of sign not important, just cell position. Ignore sign orientation.

  • Stage 2 (Letters) & Stage 3 (Signs Again). Same tips as S1 L1

Barry Hynum

Barry Hynum created a graphic (below) that can help you visualize how to mentally rotate the compass in True North as the train arrives at the station and leaves again (when it looks like it is going in a different direction, but is actually still traveling in the same direction). This graphic may be helpful to understand how to change the cardinal (compass) directions mentally.

When clicking on the target objects as they move, it can be difficult to follow them and land your click directly on them. You can actually click anywhere in the vicinity of the object, rather than clicking directly on it, and it will count as a successful turn. Brain Fitness Team