Melody Mayhem: Brain Training Has Never Sounded So Fun
This month, we’re featuring an exciting musical brain training game called Melody Mayhem. This music matching game is a fun and entertaining way to help boost some of your most important cognitive skills!
ABOUT THE GAME
The goal of this game is to match pairs of music players based on the melody.
Have you ever played the memory game where you flip over sets of cards looking for pairs of images? If yes, then you already know the basics of how Melody Mayhem works. However, just like all of our brain games, Melody Mayhem offers fun and exciting challenges. Even the most advanced players will find something to challenge them!
CogniFit’s team of neuropsychologists has developed this exciting twist on this timeless memory puzzle. It’s entertaining as well as important for training vital cognitive skills. Doesn’t that just sound like music to your ears!?
HOW TO PLAY MELODY MAYHEM
When you first start playing Melody Mayhem, the first few levels are simple. A handful of colorful musical players appear on the screen. All you need to do is match them together by finding pairs that play the same melody.
While this may seem simple at first, players will quickly discover the truth. They will need to focus and listen very carefully if they want to advance into the harder levels.
The first time users start the game, they will be in “free play” mode. Here, they can choose whatever level of difficulty they prefer. There are 6 unique levels that each have their own increasing set of challenges. This gives players a huge amount of variety in gameplay.
If a player chooses the lowest difficulty level, they will be presented with a small number of music players. Each of these players has its own unique color. At this stage, finding musical players should be fairly straightforward. Especially since the tunes in each pair will be exactly the same.
However, as the player advances into higher difficulty modes, things can take a drastic turn.
It can get quite challenging…
For example, if a player decides to play on the highest difficulty level, things will be very different. There were be more music players and they won’t have different colors. This makes it harder to remember which was which, since removing the shade will also remove a cognitive helper.
But that’s not all. Players will have to listen very closely because several music players could be playing the same tune but using a different instrument.
THE SCIENCE BEHIND MELODY MAYHEM
This exciting game helps stimulate the cognitive abilities related to Phonological Short-term Memory, Auditory Perception, and Recognition.
Phonological Short-term Memory
Phonological short-term memory (or echoic memory), is the part of our sensory memory that is in charge of all of the short-term information related to sounds that we get from our environment.
It’s our brain’s ability to record phonological sound stimuli before being processed.
The stimuli we record through PSTM automatically goes to the central auditory processor. This section is in charge of changing the electric signals from sounds into mental concepts. Think of it as a type of ‘sound image’ which we can use to keep in our brains for a short period of time. The sound image can be only be replayed during a short period of time after getting the auditory stimuli.
Where does this all happen?
Sensory memory is measured in the primary auditory cortex. This phonological memory storage area extends through different areas of the brain. This is because it requires the use of many different processes. The majority of these brain regions are located in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) – which is also where executive and attentional control are monitored.
Phonological short-term memory helps us to process information such as the name of someone we just met, a telephone number we hear, or the sound of someone’s voice.
Auditory Perception
Auditory perception is the ability to receive and interpret information that reached our ears through “audible frequency waves.” These are transmitted through the air or other means. There is a series of processes our brain follows in order to perceive the sounds around us:
- Receive Information: When an object vibrates, the waves produced by this action are transmitted by the air, etc. For example, when a person speaks, their vocal chords vibrate. When these waves reach the inner ear, certain cells activate.
- Information Transmission: These cells produce a signal that is transmitted through different nuclei until it finally reaches the medial geniculate nucleus in the thalamus.
- Information Manipulation: Finally, this auditory information is sent to the auditory cortex in the temporal lobes. The information is manipulated and sent to the rest of the brain, so you can interact with it.
We use this everyday…
For example, you answer it and hear your mom on the other end. You’re able to quickly and easily know many things. Such as recognizing her voice, understanding what she’s saying, and hearing her emotional state. All of this happens in just the first second of the call.
Answering the phone might seem like a simple task. However, it’s actually very complex and requires the use of a number of brain areas. All of these areas specialize in auditory perception and the recognition of its “sub-components.”
Recognition
Recognition is the brain’s ability to identify stimuli. These can include things like situations, places, people, or objects that you have seen before. Our brain can recover all this stored information and then compare it to what’s in front of us.
This is an important cognitive function because it’s one of the functions that make it possible to perform any task efficiently and carefully.
Recognition is a type of memory or “information recovery”. It accesses past information – but only if we’ve been exposed to these stimuli before.
We have “false positives.”
A false positive may happen when you “identify” a stimulus that you have never seen before. For example, when you believe that you recognize a restaurant that you have never been to before. On the other side, a “false negative” is when you are unable to recognize a stimulus that you have seen before. For example, you can’t remember having met a friend’s friend.
This means that good recognition is the ability to recognize places, objects, or people that you have seen before (no false negatives). Also, you must be able to identify any elements that you have not seen before (no false positives). Cognitive training can help improve recognition and decrease the number of false-negative and false-positive recognitions.
Are you ready to test your ear and train your skills in Phonological Short-term Memory, Auditory Perception, and Recognition?
We hope you enjoy this cognitive stimulation brain game and would love to hear your thoughts on this or any of our other games! If you want to share with us, send us a message on social media.
And don’t forget to keep an eye out for the next exciting game!