Top 10 brain-training apps

Keep your brain exercised and entertained. Check out our list of fun and challenging educational apps for iOS and Android.

1. Lumosity

Apple iTunes store
A screen shot of Lumosity's logo. Lumosity is an online brain training game developed by neuroscientists and psychiatrists.

Lumosity bills itself as a “gym for your brain.” Developed by a team of neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists, Lumosity customizes a brain-training schedule for users in five categories: Memory, Attention, Speed, Flexibility, and Problem Solving. Simply download the application onto your iPhone or iPad, register with an e-mail address, and then answer a series of questions to maximize your learning experience. Lumosity compiles users’ statistics into a BPI (Brain Performance Index), and has features that compare your BPI scores with other players.

Compatibility: iPhone and iPad

Cost: Free, but there are options for an extended version of the service that cost $14.95 per month for a Web-broswer version, or $80 a year for the iPhone and iPad app.

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

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