About Fit Brains
What are the Benefits of Fit Brains?
Anyone looking to improve brain performance or maximize brain health can benefit from Fit Brains. Fit Brains combines fun and engaging brain games with specially designed tracking tools to help users of all ages maximize and round-out brain skills in an entertaining fashion. Our games have a strong foundation in science and offer a varied and complex workout across multiple areas of the brain.
Incorporating Fit Brains into your daily routine can help to preserve your brain, which contains the most important asset you have: your Life Story. Your Life Story is your identity, or collected memories of daily experiences that combine to create your very own "autobiography". Regular engagement in brain health activities can also increase your overall happiness, balance your mood, and help reduce stress and anxiety that can cloud thinking or even damage the brain.
The brain, like a muscle, should ideally be stimulated on a daily basis, eve In addition to these primary areas of the brain, each area is further subdivided into sub-measures that are reflected within game activities and progression metrics. These areas are not distinctly separate; they work together in conjunction, like different instruments in an orchestra, and can be blended with one another to achieve a greater measure of brain stimulation. Each of these areas are stimulated using techniques derived from the related fields of Cognitive Psychology and Neuroscience.
How can Fit Brains help improve my brain health?
Fit Brains games offer a variety of well-rounded, scientifically based activities wrapped within a fun and engaging experience that is accessible even to first-time players. By offering stimulation across the spectrum of the brain, and ramping the difficulty in a way that increases the complexity of the tasks over time, brain games can offer people an effective means of brain exercise.
Our games are integrated with a broad collection of personalization tools that adjust training based on the user's skill level. We also provide Brain Fitness Metrics that measure individual performance and progress. Our specialized tools include:
Brain Points
Brain Points are the foundation of the FitBrains experience. They give Fit Brains members a simple focal point that allows the creation of clear goals. Users are also rewarded for training regularly, and encouraged to do so with a prominent daily and weekly goal bar. Brain Points are associated with an important concept known as Brain Reserve, which is strengthened as the brain forms new cellular connections and improves overall brain cell density. Brain Reserve can be increased by doing mental activities that are both novel and complex. Strengthening Brain Reserve helps to keep the mind strong and delay mental deterioration as we age. Brain Points represent a cumulative total of your brain fitness activity on the site across the 5 major areas of the brain.
The factors which influence Brain Point rewards are grouped into 4 categories.
- Base amount - Related to the time it takes to play a certain game.
- Endurance - Awarded when users train regularly and falls when they miss days.
- Diversity - Determined by how much variety the user includes in their training.
- Performance - A function of user’s score, accuracy and correct/incorrect answers
Game Recommendations and Brain Circuit Trainers
If you aren't sure which game to play next, you can either select the "Recommended Game", or chose to enroll in one of the "Cross-trainers" that are designed to guide you through a set number of rounds across multiple games.
Fit Brains has two different kind of training circuits; Targeted Trainers and Cross Trainers. Target trainers focus on single major brain area, like Memory or Concentration. Cross Trainers are designed to streamline people through a balanced brain workout across all 5 major areas.
Guest members have access to a few Brain Circuits over a limited amount of days. Members get full access to the Recommendations and Circuits.
What is the difference between a Guest Account and Club Fit Brains?
Guest Account (free)
Limited selection Brain Games, anyone can sign up for a free Guest Account (no credit card needed), and provides access to limited Daily and Weekly Leaderboards for each game.
Club Fit Brains
Club Members have access to the full collection of brain fitness tools and features, including:
- Brain Tools: Brain Balance Chart & Brain Points Chart, Personalized Recommendations.
- Brain Games that scale in difficulty to match individual skill levels.
- Trophies and Achievements rewarded in each game for exceptional performances.
- "My Community" Friends List, to compete against friends & the Fit Brains community
- Full Member Leaderboards that can be sorted by age groups, gender and more.
What other ways can Fit Brains help me stay motivated?
Brain health is more than a quick fix - it's about maintaining a lifelong, regular routine in order to maximize the benefits. At Fit Brains, we understand the importance of having fun when it comes to maintaining a positive lifestyle change. We strive to make our Brain activities engaging and polished, so it's easy for you to keep a consistent brain fitness routine.
If you are looking for ways to stay motivated to work out your brain on a regular basis, Fit Brains has a variety of fun and rewarding features to help you maintain interest in doing brain activity on a regular basis. These features include Trophies, Achievements and Leaderboards.
With a Guest account, you have access to limited daily and weekly leaderboards and 4 limited-time Brain Circuits. As a Member, you have access to all Member Leaderboards, Team Games, and all 12 full Brain Circuits.
In addition to the Fit Brains Index, Brain Points and Brain Circuits, Here are some of the additional features we offer to our Members:
Achievements and Awards
- Trophies - rewarded based on your overall level of accomplishment for each game.
- Achievements - indicate specific areas of exceptional performance within a game, like Accuracy, Speed, etc.
Fit Brains Community Features
- Leaderboards - view your ranking for FBi, Brain Points, Brain Trivia Leaders or Top 100 Leaders for each game by gender, age and other criteria.
What is the Science behind Fit Brains?
Scientists around the world are beginning to agree that stimulating the brain can improve brain power. Numerous studies have shown that activities such as interactive games can help maintain key cognitive functions.
Fit Brains was designed by Dr. Paul Nussbaum, national leader in Brain Health with over 20 years experience in the field of aging. It was developed on a foundation of existing cognitive training research, and is backed by a strong scientific Board of Advisors. Fit Brains is undertaking studies with leading research institutions to further support our work.
Brain Plasticity
One of the essential concepts at the core of brain fitness is the concept of "brain reserve," which is also related to the concept of brain plasticity. At nearly any point of your life, you can strengthen your brain reserve by doing tasks that are novel and complex and that stimulate a balanced variety of areas within the brain.
Brain reserve relates to the brain's ability to physically reorganize itself in response to the demands placed upon it. A brain with a strong reserve is one that has formed many cellular connections and is rich in brain cell density. A strong reserve is generally believed to have the ability to delay the onset of mental deterioration, such as Alzheimer's Disease (AD). Simply put, mental diseases must work longer and harder to manifest in a brain that has built up strong reserve.
A healthy brain should look like a lush and vibrant jungle (as opposed to an island with a single palm tree) because it is full of cellular connections that are very dense. You might think of a mental disease like Alzheimer's as a weed-whacker which invades the brain and begins to do its damage by destroying brain cells. However, it takes AD a long time to show any impact if it has to destroy a jungle's worth of brain cell connections. In contrast, AD can manifest itself fairly quickly after infiltrating a brain with only a relatively few cellular connections.
Brain Health Blog
Did you know? Your brain is a highly dynamic system that will react to the types of input you feed it. Check out our blog to learn about the latest Brain health information and other relevant topics.
Healthy Brain Lifestyles
Technical Help
Do I need to download or install software to play?
Our games work on a variety of Web Browsers and Operating Systems. The minimum requirement to run our games is Abobe Flash Player, but over 98% of computers have it installed already. If the games won't load, you may need to install the latest version of the Flash Player found here: http://www.adobe.com/products/
Is Fit Brains a secure website?
Yes. Fit Brains guarentees the security of your personal information using SSL Secure Internet communication for all personal information and purchase pages. You will know the page is secure by the "lock icon" on your screen, as well as the "https" in your browser's URL.
I have forgotten my Password.
If you forget your password, please go to the Forgot Password Page. Enter your email, and a new password will be mailed to you within a few minutes. If a new password does not arrive withing 5-10 minutes, check your junk/spam folders as the email might have been redirected.
The Games are not loading.
If you are having trouble loading the games, you may need to install the latest version of the Flash Player found here: http://www.adobe.com/products/. If you already have the latest version of Flash, issues that persist are likely due to browser caching, which can be solved by clearing the browser cache, and then refreshing the game page. Click here for instructions on how to do this.
Can I play games on my Mac?
Yes. As long as you have Adobe Flash Player installed, our games are designed to work on a variety of Operating Systems.
Some of our games require the use of a keyboard, which occasionally conflicts with the Safari browser. This often goes away if you restart Safari or reload the game. Another alternative is to use the free Firefox Browser found here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
Some parts of the website do not work.
In order for your browser to work to it's fullest capabilities, it requires JavaScript to be enabled. See below for instructions on how to enable this:
Internet Explorer
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Go to the Internet Explorer menu bar and click on:
- Tools -> Internet Options
- Click the Security tab
- Click the Custom Level button
- Make sure Active Scripting is enabled (near the bottom of the list).
Firefox
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Go to the Firefox menu bar and click on:
- Tools -> Preferences
- Click the Content tab
- Make sure Enable JavaScript is checked.