How to Maximize Your Lumosity Performance

This is a comprehensive guide that will help you to maximize your Lumosity performance. The strategies, tactics, and observations here come from my experience reaching the 99th percentile overall, as well as in each individual category.

Screenshot of raw scores, percentiles, and detailed training history.

In addition to the applied aspects of this guide, I will make some observations and speculations that came to mind. I am not formally trained in psychology, neurology, nor medicine, so I defer to  professionals that may read this guide if I state anything incorrectly concerning the efficacy of brain training tools to enhance cognitive performance in general.

Comprehensive and all-inclusive guidance will be provided ranging from general and strategic to specific and tactical and will be structured as follows.

• General
  Ideas that are related to issues that are more meta-game, long-term, and lifestyle.
• Category
  There will be strategies and observations about each category before diving into the more game-specific tactics.
• Speed
• Memory
• Attention
• Flexibility
• Problem Solving

General

1. Frequency and Duration of Training

Various sources, including those in the official Lumosity website, state that the ideal training intensity is 15-30 minutes per day every 1-3 days.  My training regimen was abnormal in that I put in sessions averaging 1-2 hours each day over the course of 2.5 weeks. As with any task, I believe it is self-evident that more practice will result in faster Brain Performance Index (BPI) increases. 

I would say that anyone who wants to improve quickly would be advised to front-load intense training of 1-2 hours per day for a few days until marginal gains start to decrease dramatically, and then go into a more leisurely regimen long-term.

2. Focus of Training

Frequency and duration of training needs to be harnessed well for the fastest improvements. Not so much 'practice makes perfect,' but rather 'well-structured and planned practice makes perfect.' I would say that the rate that BPI increases would be much slower if you were to do a single trial of a game chosen at random before randomly choosing another.

I advise the vast majority of games should be played for five or more trials at a time before moving onto a different game.  There are some exceptions to this, due to the length and nature of the games.  For example, each single trial of Penguin Pursuit, Familiar Faces, Birdwatching, Eagle Eye, or Raindrops are relatively long and therefore may be viewed as be equivalent to two or three trials of other games:

As for grouping your five-trial sets, I would say that switching categories for each five-trial set is a good idea. Let me note that there's no solid evidence that this method is the best, just that it was the method that worked well for me.

3. Stress and Anticipation

Almost all these games are stressful, especially if you're emotionally invested in improving your performance.  The major source of stress comes from time pressure, which permeates almost every game even if speed is not explicitly a component. It's necessary to be mindful of your stress and attempt to reduce by all means, for example, by sitting in a comfortable position and make sure all bodily functions do not interfere with your training.  Means that you shouldn't be training if hungry, tired, anxious, sleep, and so on since the quality of your training will suffer and those hours may not be as impactful towards your improvement.

On many games, especially those with a high speed component, excessive anticipation can be seductive, but you may end up getting crushed suddenly and then hit by a string of cascading errors.  Be mindful that you should be anticipating as minimally as possible.  There is always an anticipation component, the tough part is to be mindful that you want the right amount, not too little or too much.  Excessive anticipation will most likely lead to lower scores, and furthermore if you achieve a high score on account of anticipation, it's really just a reflection of that anticipation-induced positive variance.

5. Flow and Focus

In  Csikszentmihalyi excellent book Flow - The Psychology of Optimal Experience, he describes the state of flow as that zone where challenges meet ability.  If challenges are too great relative to your ability, for example, you have to memorize 15 tiles in Memory Match, are on Level 21 of Penguin Pursuit, or Raindrops fill your screen, you tend to be stressed.  On the other hand, if you are still in the early stages of these games, you tend to get bored. Strive to get into that flow zone whenever possible.
May mean doing a few more trials in a game you feel you are making steady progress or consciously relaxing yourself once you feel the difficulty crank up in the games.

A crucial barrier to reaching flow are the stray thoughts you may have while completing a game. These thoughts take up the limited information processing and consciousness at your command.  The three main types of things that induce these performance degrading stray thoughts are: busy environment that may distract you, rumination of something in your past (especially recently), and most importantly, constant thinking of how well you are currently doing.

Try to make a conscious pact with yourself to focus as much as you can with the task at hand.  If you do it right, you reach that blissful flow state and you tend to perform at the upper end of your abilities.


7. Healthy Lifestyle
Even if the impact of cognitive training is large, it should be viewed as rounding out the last few percentages of a healthy lifestyle that includes eating well, sleeping well, supplementation, and exercise.

For total brain training, it's much more likely than not that exercise is the ultimate brain trainer as it induces physical changes. In fact, many studies have proven definitively that cardiovascular exercise increase the rate of neurogenesis.  An accessible primer is the following article in the New York Times, 'Lobes of Steel.'
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/19/sports/playmagazine/0819play-brain.html


8. Neuroplasticity and Patience
Much scientific evidence has shown that the brain is highly plastic, but it may require a period of rest and sleep in order to solidify the neuronal physiological changes such as new synaptic connections.  I've found it true and almost magical that I can return to the same game after a good night's sleep and achieve a new Personal Best Score with what feels like much less effort than I put into the training the day before.  So it's very important to train hard, but also to relax and give yourself time for your new neuronal pathways and connections to strengthen.


9. Caffeine
I find that performance across the board improves dramatically with caffeine.  Not much else to say except that if you want the highest possible scores, a moderate amount of caffeine is required.  I suppose drugs such as Adderall would be excellent too, but a comprehensive discussion of various nootropics are beyond the scope of this guide.

Category: Speed

The games in the speed category may be viewed as simply the control of stress and anticipation.  If you can control these two issues, you will improve immediately. The tasks are simple, it's just a matter of doing them.

Speed Match

• Strive for at least 5 trials back-to-back whenever you train.
• Strive to play this game somewhere in the middle of your training session.  If it's your first game, you may not be adequately warmed up. Furthermore, leaving this for when you're 1 or 2 hours into a session is a bad idea too since you'll be tired.
• The short sound after each particular shape is useful, but the extended sound is distracting.  Experiment with turning off sound.
• Important: Do not anticipate!

Penguin Pursuit

• Try not to rest in between rounds so that you don't lose your momentum in between rounds.
• This may be a good game to start a training session.
• Do not focus on the other penguin, often during straightaways you can easily catch up since your penguin is usually much faster - at least until after stage 20.

Spatial Speed Match

• Same guidelines as for Speed Match
• In general, the short sound after each response is very useful for clearing your attention for the next one and this may be more beneficial than the distraction inherent in the long sound.  This effect seems not to occur in the Speed Match game, although it seems like it should.
• Important and worth repeating: Do not anticipate!

Rotation Matrix

• This is by far the hardest game I've encountered, so if you are trying to get a high BPI in the Speed, you can more than make up for the deficiencies in this game in the other games.  I suspect that many people have difficulty.
• In general, this seems to be more suited for the Flexibility category.
• Refer to the guidelines in Memory Match.

Category: Memory

Long-term memory is associated with crystallized intelligence, which is the accumulation of knowledge, skills, and facts over a long period of time. In contrast, short-term memory or working memory is viewed as the crucial bottleneck for thinking well. Some even go so far to assert that working memory can be used as a proxy for general intelligence. A very good primer on working memory and IQ is given on this very informative webpage.
http://www.gwern.net/DNB%20FAQ

This category in Lumosity is primarily focused on short-term memory, with some games that have a non-trivial long-term memory component such as Familiar Faces.  Much of the advice here is repetitive, since many of these games are only tiny variations on a few core memory games.

Memory Matrix

• Chunking is very important and effectively reduces the number of tiles you need to remember. Basically, try to group squares into a pattern and then unpack it for the response phase.
• If there are squares in corners, try to chunk corners together.
• Try to envision the pieces as Tetris shapes when possible.

Familiar Faces

• This game is difficult to get ramped-up on initially, but easy to score high once you get the hang of it so just be patient.
• The meter above each person should help you focus and anticipate people with items coming up.  In general, learning what to forget and what to not focus on is just as important as what to remember and to focus on.  Practically, those with full meters you can simply forget and use your limited attention and memory to focus on those who just arrived.
• Auditory cues greatly aid in remembering.  Try saying out the items and remembering the spatial locations.
• If you already have three items in memory and there's a fourth one added, it's often easier to take care of the fourth one first, then move back to the items you have queued up.
• You can envision personalities, professions, or voices for each of the people/
• Try to notice all aspects of people, no matter how small, in order to remember the person holistically.  For example, the cartoon Kirk has a British flag, so try to think of him speaking to you in a British arc-sent.
• As you get familiar with the "known unknowns" such as the limited food selection, it'll free up that part of memory into your long-term memory and it'll require less attention to encode it temporarily.
• If overwhelmed by stimuli, try to encode foods and people into first letter or first two letters.  For example, Mary, David, Charles, and Julius could simply be respectively M, D, C, J.

Memory Match

• This 1-2-back game is a bit tough to get use to, so as always, don't get discouraged and have patience by giving yourself many training trials.  I suggest doing this in sets of 10 if possible.
• There are two particular patterns that you should look for that will greatly improve your speed, strings of: alternating and repeated symbols.  These free up the working memory and processing required to visualize the two hidden symbols and you just have to realize when you are in the midst of a sequence.
• The tiles with the Chinese letters are much tougher than the color-rich symbols, so expect lower scores on these if you don't know Chinese.

Follow That Frog

• I find that thinking of a line following the frog is useful so that you have another cue to support your memory.
• Draw line paths into shapes.
• This game is still in Beta as of mid-October 2012.

Pinball Recall

• Chunking is the key to all the memory games, but especially important here.  Try to form patterns with the bumpers whenever you can to relieve yourself of the memory burden.
• If a path seems too easy, especially at the higher levels, it is.  Therefore, take a bit more time to think if it seems a bit too easy.  
• Be mindful of the density of bumpers and focus a bit more attention there.

Monster Garden

• Yet another exercise in chunking - try to form patterns of monsters.
• Use the auditory clues.

Name Tag

• Just a standard memory card game.
• Consider all the tips in the Familar Faces game.

 Rhyme Workout

• Interestingly, you can maximize your score by simply focusing on 1-back without ever increasing the difficulty to two back.  Any deficiencies in this game can be made up by all the other memory games.  Of course, this is a good strategy only if your only intention is to maximize your Lumosity score.

Face Memory Workout

• Essentially all guidelines in Memory Match apply.
• Our brains are wired up to recognize even nuanced differences in facial features, so using gender and race will be useful here.

Memory Match Overload

• I found this to be one of the hardest games in Lumosity, on par with Rotation Matrix.  Therefore, it can be neglected at first while you are building up your facility in the memory category with the other games.
• Try to encode the fruit into colors or the first letters of the colors.

Moneycomb

• Form geometrical shapes to chunk locations of the coins.
• Try to use the different color of some of the hexagons as landmark.
• Mistakes and guessing are not disastrous, you only get penalized a small amount.

Memory Lane

• This is one of the most difficult, but cooler games in the Memory category.  I find that 3-back is virtually impossible with two stimuli, even more difficult than the 3-back in Memory Match Overload where only one stimulus (the fruit) is considered.
• Don't be afraid to stay at the same level to get more experience, even if you have passed the requirements to move up to higher levels.

Category: Attention

In general, it is useful to move slightly back from the monitor so that all stimuli are clustered more towards the center of your vision and awareness.

Attention is by far the toughest category for me as I'm an strong intuitive type under MBTI theory.  Because this category may actually be a good discriminant of sensors vs. intuitives it may be worthy of a scientific study, for example, trying to ascertain whether differentially lower BPIs for a given person in Attention while high in Memory may be correlated with intuitive types.

Eagle Eye

• The main issue is simply to relax since stressing out here will be detrimental to performance.
• Try to play this game only when refreshed, never late at night or at the end of a training session.
• Move a bit away from the monitor and try to focus as hard as you can in anticipation of the stimuli.

Lost in Migration

• A good game to play right before or after Speed Match or Spatial Speed Match.
• Caffeine will definitely improve performance here.
• Relax.

Birdwatching

• All guidelines in Eagle Eye apply here.
• It may feel unfair that you miss a long string of birds in a row.  This is a drawback of this game and Eagle Eye, so perhaps Lumosity might want to increase the hit radius and assign a wider range of points.
• Your score will drift upwards the more you play since you will start to learn the names of birds.

Observation Tower

• If you've reached your limits by focusing just on the dot, perhaps you can start slightly above it and sweep to slightly below it.  There should be plenty of time for this.
• Lean a bit back from the monitor to get a bigger field of view.
• You can use logic since you the numbers are sequentially ordered.

Space Junk

• At lower stages, you can try to actually count the number of objects.  However, at higher stages you just have to choose based on intuition.
• Higher stages rarely involve less than 7 pieces of junk, and if they do, it's easy to count these.
• There's no other way around it but choosing based on your intuition-based feeling since there's so much that flashes by so qiuckly at the higher stages.  Luckily, your intuition is pretty good at discerning a lot from a little.

Playing Koi

• You should never have to keep track of (N+1)/2 Koi at any one time.  After you are finished feeding the first (N+1)/2 Koi, shift your attention to the rest of the unfed Koi.
• Group Koi together when possible and form geometrical shapes with the relevant Koi at the vertices.
• Try to be extra mindful when your tracked Koi float underneath the Lily pad, since more than 2 Koi can disappear completely.  In which case, you simply have to use the direction they were swimming before getting obscured.

Top Chimp

• Try to ignore the competition against the chimps, since it means absolutely nothing.
• All guidelines for the Observation Tower apply here.

Category: Flexibility

I find that playing games in this category tend to get me the most wired up and are the least boring - they're actually fun to play!

I found the games in this category are the most amenable to improvement.  Many times I would play a game and achieve Personal Best scores on consecutive days without feeling I put forth much effort.  This could be anecdotal evidence that's specific to me, so would be interested in what others have experienced.

    

Word Bubbles Rising

• The main challenge is to run through the typically 4-8 different ways you can change the form of a word to make it: plural, adverb, past tense, a noun from verb (run to runner), etc. 
• The secondary challenge is to run through the ways to change the word form tactically so that you add or subtract one or two letters.
• I find that starting with longer words is more useful since typing fast under time pressure near the end is easier with short words

Brain Shift

• There's a fine line to straddle as you get up in speed between going with your feeling (that's usually well-developed, but only after many trials) and taking the time to check.  I would say that I want 90% certainty if I'm going very quickly and that usually serves the purpose.
• Try to respond at equal intervals so that each selection is as standardized as possible.
• Simply relax and try not to worry too much about the outcome.  With trials and rest, results will come.

Color Match

• The main trick is to focus on the left word so that you can see only the color of the right word out of the corner of your eye and therefore do not read it unintentionally.

Word Bubbles

• All guidelines for Word Bubbles Rising apply here.
• This game has more space to take in longer words before the slots exhaust, so your score will benefit more from longer words here than in Word Bubbles Rising.  On the other hand, you want to maximize all the word lengths, so be mindful that you are not expending so much time at the longer words.
• Press the down arrow key, followed by the up arrow key for long words so that you can change their forms very quickly without all the time wasted typing in the same letters again. Unfortunately, this method does not exist for Word Bubbles Rising, only for Word Bubbles.

Disillusion

• Verbalize to yourself "Vertical X" (where X is the rule) continuously.
• Try to only hit the edge pieces when starting training on this game and try not to worry about any fancy double or triple clearings - those can come later.

Route to Sprout

• Many patterns repeat, so your score will almost certainly get better.
• As you start, don't be too obsessive about finding an optimal route as a decent one.

Disconnection

• This is essentially Disillusion, so all guidelines from there apply here.

Brain Shift Overdrive

• Slow down and relax, put in a lot of trials, and you will get better gradually, almost magically.
• If you feel yourself stressing out, give yourself a similar half second or full second for before every response to standardize the timing.

Category: Problem Solving

The Problem Solving Category is mostly simple math with two games that are logic-based.  The Storm games might probably be better classified as speed, since they aren't actually problem solving anything difficult, but rather not freaking out as you get overwhelmed by too much under time pressure.  As with all the other sections, the key is simply to relax.

Raindrops with Storms: Addition, Multiplication, Subtraction, Division

• The orange drops in Raindrops can clear the screen come by periodically and are very important to get the highest scores. If you feel like you are getting overwhelmed, be extra vigilant for the orange ones.
• Using the numeric keypad on the keyboard is the only real way to get very high scores, so take some time to get familiar with that.  I use my laptop's keypad with low and hard-to-distinguish numbers, so I am sure that my scores would increase drastically if I used the keypad attached to full-sized keyboard that would provide better haptic feedback.
• Addition and multiplication tend to be easier cognitive tasks than subtraction and division, so if you are stuck for that half second (an eternity in Raindrops time), try to think of what you can add to the lower number or multiply the lower number by to get the upper number.

Chalkboard Challenge

• Try to look at both sides quickly to get a general sense of what computations are needed - there will often be shortcuts such as a number that's both divided and multiplied by the same number.. 
• It is too slow to fully calculate one side, then fully calculate the other side, and then compare, so try to avoid full calculations whenever possible.
• Usually the side that gets above 30 is the larger side.
• Near the end when the expressions are very complex anad you have almost no time left, you might simply want to guess.

Word Sort

• This game is not timed, so you simply not rushing will yield better results.
• Choices do not come at random.  If the choice is 3 letter word, then the odds of 3 letter words coming out increase significantly.  Same goes for all sorts of other categories.
• Make a complete list of the different dimensions and remember what they are so you are more primed to be aware of them.

By the Rules

• This is a logic problem that is completely solved.  I quickly created the grid above, which I will explain.
• There are six dimensions with three values each:
• Fill = {empty, gradient, full}
• Color = {red, green, blue}
• Shape = {circle, triangle, square}
• Background = {horizontal, diagonal, vertical}
• Border = {dotted, wide, and solid}
• Number = {1, 2, 3}
• Colors of grid
• Green = Follows the Rule
• Red = Does Not Follow The Rule
• Using this structure, we apply the following logical rules to determine both the relevant dimension and the specific value.
• If more than one value in a dimension is accepted, then that is not a relevant dimension.
• If only one value in a dimension is accepted, than that could possibly be the relevant dimension and value.
• If one value in a dimension is rejected, then that could still be the relevant dimension, but not that value.
• If two values in a dimension are rejected, then that could still be the relevant dimension, but not those two values.
• If all three values in a dimension are rejected, then that cannot be the relevant dimension.
• There can be degeneracies, for example, one value is accepted in each of k potentially relevant dimensions.  In this case, you can guess with 1/k probability of correctness.
• The rules above may be slightly overconstrained or underconstrained, a deeper analysis would need to be done to determine what the minimal constraining set of rules are.  However, these guidelines are enough to at least come very close to maxing out the score attainable in this game.

- Kevin