True North

The challenge with visiting an exciting new city is finding your way around. To do so, often requires following a sequence of instructions to reach your destination. You need to hold many things in your memory such as the turns to take, the distances to travel, the direction headed in and so much more. Well-developed brain coordination is vital to effective navigation in unfamiliar places.

 

The True North brain training exercise helps you practice holding this kind of information in your head as you follow increasingly complex instructions while simultaneously keeping track of ever-changing cardinal directions. This type of mental road mapping is not only useful when you are following directions, word for word, and travelling from one location to another. It has the added benefit of improving both your memory for multi-tasking and in other situations, your short-term memory skills.

At first, the instructions given for Stage two, three and four may sound somewhat odd. The reason is that in order to train your brain better in the auditory memory component of the task, speech processing has been applied to the instructions, similar to the Memory Grid exercise.

 

With the True North exercise, you will need to follow directions to reach a destination by train. As part of the task, you will need to remember on which stops to get off and the directions you are headed towards. The task will grow increasingly more difficult in the following ways as you work your way through the exercise:

  • Instructions increase in number.
  • Orientation details become more challenging.
  • Instructions become more puzzling and complex.
  • Speech becomes more rapid and less processed.