Keep your mind limbr.
Six short exercises for practising different memory and attention skills, designed with older adults in mind. No sign-up. Works in your browser. Your progress stays on your device.
Today's workoutToday's workout
One round of each covers all six.
Your progress
The six exercises
Spot the Difference
Pattern-separation memory exercise
Study a series of creatures, then decide whether each test image is new, an exact repeat, or similar but changed.
Memory Palace
Practise the method of loci
Place items along a familiar route, then mentally revisit the stops to recall what you placed there.
Remember Later
Prospective-memory exercise
Keep an intention in mind while sorting words, and respond when the matching cue appears.
Soft Glance
Brief visual-attention exercise
Look at a short visual display, then answer questions about the centre and the edge at your own pace.
Twin Flakes
Visual detail and memory exercise
Snowflakes flash one at a time around a ring. Find where the two identical ones appeared among the look-alikes.
Steps Back
Working-memory exercise (n-back)
Stones light up one at a time. Say whether each is the same stone as one, two or three steps back.
Why these six?
Most "brain games" hammer one skill, reaction speed or simple recall, and improvement rarely carries over to daily life. limbr instead trains six distinct, well-studied mental skills, each one that tends to change with age:
Pattern separation
The hippocampus keeping similar experiences from blurring: "did I take my pill today, or was that yesterday?" Probed by telling near-identical items apart.
The memory palace
A 2,000-year-old technique that transfers: anchoring new information to a familiar place. The same method memory champions use for decks of cards.
Prospective memory
Remembering to do things: pills, calls, the stove. The most life-relevant memory of all, and rarely trained anywhere else.
Speed of processing
How much you take in from a single glance, the useful field of view that narrows with age. In the large ACTIVE trial, this was the training whose gains still showed a decade on.
Visual detail at speed
Quick eye movements to wherever something appears, telling near-identical things apart, and holding several images in mind at once. Twin Flakes asks for all three together.
Working memory
Holding a few things in mind while you work on them, and swapping the new in for the old: a phone number while you find a pen. Steps Back asks you to keep a short run updated, step after step.
limbr is a wellness and education tool for healthy brain exercise. It is not a medical device and does not diagnose, treat, or prevent any condition. If you're concerned about memory changes, please speak with your doctor.
Before you begin
Choose any exercise. Read the exercise guides for instructions and limitations. Scores describe your performance in a game; they are not a diagnosis or a measure of everyday functioning.