App Smackdown

For my App Smackdown, I chose an app called Lumosity. Lumosity is an app made to train and workout your brain through different games. The idea behind Lumosity is that it provides new, challenging activities for the brain daily in order to create new neural pathways and connections. If the brain is not introduced to new stimuli, it won’t make any new connections and will continue to use its existing ones. Lumosity “challenges the brain to work in different ways.” The activities are created by a combination of neuroscientists and professional game designers. This means that each game serves a purpose for your brain while being colorful, stimulating, and fun. Also, the app can personalize a daily workout for you, so it makes sure you’re stimulating different parts of your brain and changes difficulty levels as you get better. Unfortunately, the app itself is free, but to have access to all the games at once, you have to pay for the premium version, which is about sixty dollars for the year. With the free version, you only get to play about three games per day. However, it still is personalized to your profile, and it’s still great if you just want to quickly workout your brain once a day.

Lumosity is a great app for the Speech-Language Pathology field. I actually discovered in while observing a Speech-Language Pathologist. It can be used for all ages. Many of the clients SLPs treat have memory, attention, and processing impairments, so this app is perfect for improving cognitive abilities and training their brains. Specifically, it can be used for traumatic brain injury and stroke patients to retrain the connections they have lost. It’s great for kids because they’re playing games, but little do they know, they’re making their brains stronger at the same time. Right now, I only have the free version to experiment with the app and decide if it is a good investment for my future career. I definitely think it will be an app that I will put out the money for because no matter my client population, I can make it fit. It would also be a good app for educators as well and those who just want to train their brains!