The Squeaking Mouse

Game Description

Strengthen your visual and auditory memory with this game. In this exercise, you are asked to match the cries, songs or noises of animals with their photographs. You will see visual images of the animals on the screen and hear a familiar call of the wild. In many cases, you will be able to match the visual image to the sound almost immediately. In other cases, you will need some time. To help the matching process, you will hear a short sound sequence, followed by a longer sound sequence. To make it more interesting you can choose a theme (In the forest, at the farm, by the water, in Africa or around the world). You can also choose to play with 6, 8 or 10 animal sounds. It's your choice.

Cognitive Function Exercised

The primary areas of the brain that are exercised in this game are the auditory and visual regions located in the temporal and occipital lobes. The purpose of this game is to draw upon our working memory and long-term memory of visual and auditory characteristics of each animal, practice visual and spatial scanning of the images on the screen, and to practice our ability to concentrate on this type of material. In some cases, deductive reasoning will be needed to choose the right match, eliminating the choices that have already been made and those that are most obviously wrong.

Benefits to Daily Life

In an increasingly noisy world, the ability to detect meaningful sounds in the midst of general background noise becomes very important. Our ability to distinguish such sounds can become less precise as we age. For example, have you ever tried picking out a stream of conversation among other conversations in the background at a party or a convention? How about sitting on a train and trying to stay focused on one thing while masking the background noises of doors closing, horns blowing and other people's music or conversations? This game helps train the characteristics necessary to stay sharp in this area.