CogniFit - Fuel a Car: Brain Game

"Fuel a Car" Brain Game: What is it?

Fuel a Car is a brain training game. To advance in the game, we will have to attend to the needs of each vehicle (such as pouring the proper gasoline) and then raise the barrier so that they can get out and avoid queues. However, as the level of complexity of this brain training game increases, the cognitive demands will increase.

As you advance and help improve your cognitive skills trained in this online brain game, it will advance with you. Fuel a Car is a scientific resource designed to constantly measure performance and automatically regulate the difficulty to ensure that the user is getting the most out of each training session. The mind game Fuel a Car is appropriate for children and adults and can help improve essential cognitive skills.

How can the brain game "Fuel a Car" improve your cognitive abilities?

Training with brain games like Fuel a Car stimulates specific neural patterns. The repetition of this pattern through consistent training can help improve the creation of new synapses and neural circuits capable of reorganizing and recovering damaged or weakened cognitive functions

This brain game can be played by anyone looking to test and improve their cognitive performance.

• Divided Attention: To advance in this brain training game you have to look at each and every one of the vehicles that arrive at the gas station at the same time. By doing this activity, we are stimulating our divided attention. This cognitive ability is fundamental for our daily lives, since a poor state of this cognitive ability would make it difficult for us to manage the attentional resources needed to perform two or more activities at the same time, such as when we drive a car, cook, or take notes in class at the same time as we listen to what the teacher says.

• Response time: This brain game tests our reflex capabilities. We have to quickly identify and respond to every new stimulus that appears on the screen. Our goal is to act as quickly as possible to avoid a build-up of cars. By doing this exercise we are testing our ability to react. Improving our response time is essential for our daily lives, as it allows us to react more quickly and respond accurately to unforeseen stimuli. For example, responding or reacting quickly to a comment from the teacher.

• Processing speed: It is necessary to think quickly about which option to choose in order to satisfy the demand. Since the stimuli will disappear we need to think fast and must have good processing speed. This is relevant in our daily life when we have to make an urgent decision or take in the information that is communicated to us.

• Visual Scanning: To advance in this brain game we will need to scan what is happening on the move, and quickly identify the specific service that is being demanded by each vehicle. Once that need is detected, our brain must recover the specific location of each vehicle and attend to it. To carry out this process efficiently it is necessary to detect and identify the different stimuli properly. This requires stimulating and strengthening our visual scanning ability. This cognitive ability is fundamental to our daily lives, as it allows us to perform visual searches to find relevant stimuli. For example, traffic signs while driving, or important words within a text.

• Updating: In this brain game we pursue a clear objective: to satisfy the needs of each vehicle without causing traffic jams. In order to move forward, we will have to constantly check whether we are responding correctly to requests. In doing so, we are stimulating and strengthening our updating capacity. Improving this cognitive ability is essential, as it allows us to update our behavior and ensure that it is adapted to the circumstances. Detecting in time that we have made a mistake allows us to react and take the necessary measures to solve it.

• Focused Attention: To advance in this brain training game we must correctly identify the color of each car, its specific need and the time we have to attend it. By performing this mental task we are stimulating and reinforcing our focused attention. Improving this cognitive ability is very important in many situations in our daily lives, as it allows us to deal efficiently with different stimuli. Whether it's the teacher's speech, the contents of a book or report, the vehicles and road signs, etc. This cognitive ability allows us to pay attention to what we need to work on, and also to reduce dangerous situations.

• Working memory: To advance in this brain game we must remember for a few seconds the pending requirements of each vehicle that appears on the screen, mentally organize the information, set priorities and attend to them. By practicing this exercise we are stimulating and strengthening our working memory. Improving this type of short-term memory is fundamental to our daily lives, as it allows us to temporarily store and manipulate information in order to perform all kinds of complex cognitive tasks such as understanding language, reading, performing mathematical operations, learning new things, or reasoning.

• Planning: To advance in this brain training game, we need to prepare a strategy that allows us to organize the tasks as efficiently as possible, avoiding chaos. By doing this, we are stimulating and strengthening the neural connections involved in our planning capacity. Improving this cognitive ability is fundamental to our daily lives, as it allows us to "think about the future" and mentally anticipate the right way to achieve a specific goal. It helps us, for example, determine how we should start a task and make the right decisions needed to execute it.

What happens when you don't train your cognitive abilities?

Our brains are designed to save resources and be as efficient as possible, which is why it erases the connections that aren't being used. This is why if a certain cognitive skill isn't used frequently, the brain doesn't supply it with the resources it needs, and it becomes weaker and weaker. This makes us less able to use the weakened cognitive skill, making us less efficient in activities in our daily lives.