My Brain Trainer

I've had help from a number of important technologies during my recovery. All are easily available and ready for action, but I want to tell you first about what I thought the most important, the website, My Brain Trainer.⁽¹⁾ It is marketed as an online mental gymnasium - a "brain-gym" - for healthy people. Healthy people are those not fortunate enough to have had a TBI. :-) Yet, just like physiotherapy and physical gyms, this brain-gym is also very useful for TBI recoverers.

The website currently contains ten different series of exercises designed to test different activities of the brain. Those activities range from reaction speed through short term memory to executive function. The tests gradually get harder within each series and the website is very clear on results. It gives you your score and what underpins it. It also gives you the average of the scores of other people.

Those comparisons don't make me despair when I perform below average, though. And I do perform well below average for some activities - I consistently get a score over 25% lower than the average (for my age group) for reaction speed to audio stimulus (although not, interestingly, to visual stimulus). Still, because those averages are mainly for healthy people, they don't represent a good comparison for someone with a TBI.

Despite my continued slow audio reactions, I think the website has helped my brain function in a range of areas. The first area I noticed was short-term memory, but I can also add executive function and an ability to respond fast to a changing environment to that list. The latter was a particularly big thing for me and, right now, I still hope to improve it greatly! I don't like to think, however, what I'd be like without the website.

For the full gymnasium you need to pay about US$10 for three months' access. You can still have a small go for free, though. Click on 'Take the Challenge!' to access one of the exercises. And enjoy!

Cheers,
Mike

(1) My Brain Trainer is but one of a number of online brain-gyms. Although I haven't tried the others, three websites (including it) are discussed in this article.