Are you 65 or older? Take this quiz to see if your brain could use a tune-up.

1) Do you have trouble hearing and following conversations in a loud restaurant or other crowded space?

(a) Often
(b) Sometimes
(c) Never

 

2) When you’re driving, are you slow to react to things like a car braking ahead of you or a deer in the road?

(a) Often
(b) Sometimes
(c) Never

 

3) Do you ever walk into a room and forget what you’re there to do?

(a) Often
(b) Sometimes
(c) Never

 

4) Have you ever spent a few minutes reading an article or a book, only to realize that you haven’t paid attention to what you’re reading?

(a) Often
(b) Sometimes
(c) Never

 

5) Do you have trouble remembering the names of people you meet on social occasions?

(a) Often
(b) Sometimes
(c) Never

 

6) Have you ever forgotten to take your medications, or struggled to follow instructions for taking them?

(a) Often
(b) Sometimes
(c) Never

 

Understanding your results

If you answered “Often” or “Sometimes” to any of the questions, BrainHQ can help. These everyday memory slips and mishaps may not be interfering with your life much now. But they can keep you from being your best, and they could get worse as you age.

So, how can BrainHQ help with challenges like following directions and remembering people’s names? Research shows that they can improve five skill areas related to these everyday challenges of aging. Here’s how it works.

 

1. Attention span

Plenty of things can distract you wherever you are: the television, message alerts on your smartphone, a barking dog, cars driving by on the street, and so on. The more you can ignore those distractions, the better you can focus on what you’re trying to do. BrainHQ includes several exercises that focus on attention. One of BrainHQ’s exercises, Mixed Signals, challenges your brain to pay attention to what matters while ignoring what doesn’t. The trick is to do it even when what you hear and what you see on the screen don’t match.

 

2. Driving skills

Life comes at you fast when you’re driving, which means your brain needs to move fast too. Unfortunately, our brains, like our bodies, tend to move a little slower as we age.

The good news is that training your brain can help your brain process information quicker. In another BrainHQ exercise, Double Decision, you exercise your ability to notice things quickly in your peripheral (side) vision, something that sharpens your ability to see what’s happening and react to it more quickly.

And those skills can transfer to real-world situations. In fact, studies have shown that BrainHQ training helps people brake more quickly and can cut at-fault car crashes by 48%.

 

3. Hearing skills

Anyone who has ever worn a hearing aid knows that simply amplifying sound doesn’t automatically improve your hearing. Sounds may be loud but still hard to understand, especially in a noisy environment such as a crowded restaurant or a movie theater.

Research has shown that BrainHQ’s brain training program can help you process sound better by improving your brain’s speed and accuracy — helping your brain process the meaningful sounds in speech. With BrainHQ’s Fine Tuning exercise, you learn to tell the difference between two similar syllables (“ga” and “ka,” for example) that have been stretched and exaggerated. Master that exercise, and you’ll be able to better understand what your loved ones or friends are saying at the dinner table in that crowded restaurant.

 

4. People skills

Some people seem to have a knack for remembering names and faces, and some may even get better at this important skill by learning memory techniques. For example, it can help to write down a person’s name or repeat it back to them.

Training your brain can also help sharpen your memory. One BrainHQ exercise, Face Facts, shows you names, faces, and facts about people, then challenges you to remember which facts go with which names and faces. Keep practicing, and the idea is that you won’t have as hard a time remembering that friendly waiter’s name or face at your favorite local restaurant. Or, more importantly, your adult grandkid’s significant other.

 

5. Memory

If you’ve ever worried that your memory isn’t very good, you’re not alone. About 10% of people over the age of 65 have memory or thinking problems. Even if you don’t have a diagnosed problem, you may still get worried when you forget to take your vitamins or don’t remember why you walked into the kitchen.

One positive outcome of training your brain is the ability to sharpen your memory. And BrainHQ gives you the means to do it.

For example, the To-Do List Training or True North exercises challenge you to remember and follow a set of verbal instructions. They exercise your working memory, your brain’s ability to juggle information and keep things in mind.

 

BrainHQ brain training exercises exercise your brain, similar to the way lifting weights at the gym works out your body. The big difference? You can’t see your brain, just the results of its performance. “But if you could just look at it, you’d say, ‘Man, that brain is buff,’” says Dr. Merzenich.