How apps like Luminosity can help you to train your brain

Satellite navigation has long driven motorists round the twist with errant maps. Now, it seems, it’s re-routing our brains and taking them in the wrong direction too.

A study this week has revealed that normal brain activity linked to simulating the different possible routes for a journey appears to be entirely absent when a person is following directions rather than independently planning a route. In other words, you switch off.

So what can you do to kick your brain up a gear? Download an app to give your mind the full MOT it needs. If you can’t quite tear yourself away from cars, Cognito is the app for you: it includes traffic-based logic games in its story-based brain-training tests (move the gridlocked vehicles in order to get your vehicle from A to Z) and works on memory, logic and word mini-games, tracking how your skills improve over time.

Lumosity, a free multipurpose app, is split into sessions of three games tailored to your goals: memory, attention, problem solving, processing speed or flexibility of thinking, which are played against the clock and change every time.

If road rage is more of a problem — and, of course, a sat nav telling you to “make a U-turn where possible” doesn’t help — you might find free app Personal Zen helpful. Players follow two animated characters, Calm and Angry, as they wade through a field. Developed by researchers from Hunter College and the City University of New York, the game reduces anxiety by training your brain to focus more on the positive.

Remembering street signs and where to go is important. Eidetic, a free app, uses a technique called spaced repetition to help you memorise anything from important phone numbers to facts. Unlike other apps it works by using things that are important to you, from a significant someone’s email to a memorable quote. Avoid brain break down by building a mind palace.

Follow Samuel Fishwick on Twitter: @Fish_o_wick