Methodology
The science behind your score
Your cognitive score is not a guess. It is derived from three neuroscience-informed measures, combined into a single adaptive index.
iBrain Gym measures three core cognitive domains — attention, working memory, and executive function — using tasks informed by decades of cognitive neuropsychology research. Each session produces a composite score that reflects your cognitive state at that moment in time.
Attention & Processing Speed
The go/no-go reaction task measures how quickly and accurately your brain processes a stimulus and initiates a response. Slower reaction times and higher error rates indicate reduced attentional resources — often linked to fatigue, stress, or sleep deprivation. This is informed by the psychomotor vigilance paradigm (PVT), a well-studied measure in cognitive research.
Working Memory Capacity
The sequential recall task measures how many items your working memory can hold and manipulate simultaneously. Accuracy and response latency together reflect the capacity and efficiency of working memory processes. Working memory is one of the strongest predictors of general cognitive performance and is sensitive to both acute and chronic stressors, based on research in cognitive psychology.
Cognitive Flexibility & Executive Control
The task-switching paradigm measures your brain's ability to shift between rules and suppress habitual responses. The 'switch cost' — the extra time and errors incurred when switching — is a direct measure of executive function. High switch costs indicate cognitive load or reduced inhibitory control. This task design is informed by established cognitive flexibility research, including paradigms used in the Trail Making Test (TMT-B).
How the composite score is calculated
Raw metrics extracted
Each test produces raw signals: average reaction time, error rate, accuracy percentage, selection latency, switch cost, and standard deviation of response times.
Adaptive baseline comparison
Your raw metrics are compared against your personal baseline — built from your previous sessions. On your first session, population norms are used. This means your score reflects your state relative to your own typical performance, not an arbitrary fixed scale.
Four domain scores computed
Focus (attention), Mental Energy (working memory efficiency), Stability (consistency of responses), and Flexibility (executive control) are each scored 0–100 using validated conversion functions.
Confidence weighting applied
Each domain score is assigned a confidence tier (high / medium / low) based on trial count and signal quality. Low-confidence scores are down-weighted in the composite to prevent noisy data from distorting your result.
Composite score produced
A weighted average of the four domain scores produces your final cognitive index. The weighting reflects the relative reliability of each domain in your current session.
Why your pattern matters more than a single score
A single cognitive score is a snapshot. What reveals your true cognitive health is the pattern across sessions — how your scores fluctuate with sleep, stress, exercise, and time of day. iBrain Gym tracks this pattern and surfaces meaningful deviations: days when you are significantly above or below your personal baseline. Over time, this becomes a cognitive fingerprint unique to you.
Foundational research that informs the design of these tasks
These methods are inspired by established cognitive science, but this product is not a clinical or diagnostic tool.
Dinges, D.F. & Powell, J.W. (1985). Microcomputer analyses of performance on a portable, simple visual RT task during sustained operations. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 17(6), 652–655. DOI:10.3758/BF03200977
Baddeley, A. (2003). Working memory: looking back and looking forward. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 4(10), 829–839. DOI:10.1038/nrn1201
Monsell, S. (2003). Task switching. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(3), 134–140. DOI:10.1016/S1364-6613(03)00028-7
Lezak, M.D., Howieson, D.B., Bigler, E.D., & Tranel, D. (2012). Neuropsychological Assessment (5th ed.). Oxford University Press.