THE SCIENCE BEHIND PEAK

Peak games are designed to challenge your cognitive abilities

Cognitive abilities are mental tools we use every day to help us navigate the world. Imagine going to the supermarket. If you want to have a successful trip you need your memory (to remember what’s missing from the fridge); you need to pay attention (supermarkets are crazy places!); and you need to be able to solve problems (is that 20% Off deal really good value for money?).

Everyday activities exercise your cognitive skills and so it makes sense to keep them sharp!

Challenge your cognitive abilities!
Brain Training

Cognitive abilities and the Brain

Our cognitive skills are enabled by our brain. This incredible organ does so much and we’re only just beginning to understand its amazing power.

It’s worth remembering that our brain is like a muscle and it can change over time, responding to what we do with it. This means that as we challenge the brain, it affects its functionality. This concept is called neuroplasticity and it means your brain is not fixed.
It strengthens and weakens over time and can be affected by the challenges you set it.

Cognitive training

Cognitive training relies on this amazing phenomenon. Our brain is a result (among other things) of how we use it and so Peak games are designed to challenge it by focusing on specific cognitive skills.

This is what scientists mean when they talk about cognitive or brain training. It suggests that challenging the brain with cognitive tasks over a period of time can affect its functionality and the performance of other related tasks that haven’t been the subject of training.

Cognitive Training
Supporting Studies

Studies

Cognitive training is something that lots of researchers are trying to learn more about and lots of studies support this idea.

For example, there is evidence to support the effectiveness of training among healthy older adults and older adults1 with dementia2. In these studies training through reading and arithmetic tasks impacted executive functions like attention. A meta analysis (that’s basically a study of a bunch of studies) that reviewed the literature on working memory training suggests that it could yield improvements in other untrained tasks that require memory and attention skills3.

Studies continue because the brain, how it works, and what affects it, are fascinating scientific questions and rightly so. At Peak we work really hard to help investigate the effects of the games so that we can deliver the best experience for our users.

1 Uchida S and Kawashima R (2008). Reading and solving arithmetic problems improves cognitive functions of normal aged people: a randomized controlled study. Age (Dordr) 30(1): 21–29.

2 Kawashima R et al. (2005). Reading aloud and arithmetic calculation improve frontal function of people with dementia. The Journals of Gerontology: Series A, 60(3): 380–384.

3 Klingberg T (2010). Training and plasticity of working memory. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 14: 317–324.

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