Under Pressure

Game Description

In this exercise, you have to determine the distance between two objects, by quickly scanning the whole screen.

Cognitive Function Exercised

The parietal cortex is the main brain area involved in visuo-spatial skills. However, this exercise also trains your visual scanning and visual attention skills.

Visual-spatial skills are a set of mental processes that allow us to perceive, interpret and act on visual stimuli in our environment. “Visual” refers to environmental information that we take in through our eyes. “Spatial” refers to where things are in three-dimensional space. The location of an object can be described in relation to one’s own body (viewer-centered spatial information) or in relation to other objects in the environment (object-centered spatial information).

Often, we aren’t even aware that we are using our visual-spatial skills. As a result, we tend to take these skills for granted. Although visual-spatial skills seem to occur “automatically” and “effortlessly”, they are actually very complex abilities that involve a number of different brain regions. Visual-spatial skills should not be thought of a single, unitary ability. Rather, they represent a diverse set of skills that have different functions in daily activities.

Benefits to Daily life

In everyday life, you need to take into consideration the size, shape and angles of objects in order to judge their distance in relation to you. Judging distance and depth (e.g. how far is it from my hand to that cup?), judging velocity (speed) (e.i. how fast is that car moving toward me?) and judging volume (e.g. will these leftovers fit in that container?) are questions that also rely on skills practiced in this exercise.