A brain-training platformer. Ten worlds, ten skills, three lives.
Grab the bright orbs, skip the ones marked ✕. A Go/No-Go task: the game pushes you to act and you practice holding back. Inhibitory control is a core executive function.
Verbruggen & Logan (2008); Diamond (2013).A signpost flashes a shape pattern, hides it, then asks you to open the gates in that order while running and jumping. A sequence-span task (Corsi / Simon family) under dual-task load.
Corsi (1972); Baddeley (2012).Blocks show color words in the wrong ink; the rule flips every station between WORD and INK. You fight Stroop interference and pay a task-switch cost at each stop.
Stroop (1935); Monsell (2003).Jump pads launch you further when you press on the beat. Sensorimotor synchronization ties attention to time; rhythm practice is linked with sharper auditory attention and timing.
Repp & Su (2013); Tierney & Kraus (2013).Gems stream past. Grab one only if it matches the gem before it (two before, at Tier 2). This is the N-back task, the most-studied working-memory updating exercise.
Kirchner (1958); Jaeggi et al. (2008).A sign shows a shape; three doors show it turned or flipped. Only a true rotation opens. That is the classic mental rotation task, a direct measure of spatial reasoning.
Shepard & Metzler (1971).Hit numbered blocks to reach the target sum exactly. Go over and the station resets. Mental arithmetic plus look-ahead leans on working memory and planning in prefrontal cortex.
DeStefano & LeFevre (2004).Bridges only build while you breathe with the ring: four seconds in, six out, about six breaths a minute. Resonance breathing, the pace used in HRV biofeedback to settle the nervous system. No enemies.
Lehrer & Gevirtz (2014); Zaccaro et al. (2018).Riddles with a tempting fast answer and a correct slow one. Pick a door. These are Cognitive Reflection Test items: they train you to notice the gut answer and check it.
Frederick (2005); Kahneman (2011).A shoreline that runs from sunrise to sunset. At each tide gap you count seconds in your head with no clock in sight, then press jump. That is an interval-timing task: your internal clock, which leans on attention, dopamine and the cerebellum. The sea view is not decoration either: natural scenes lower stress on their own.
Buhusi & Meck (2005); Ulrich (1984); Bratman et al. (2015).Action games have been shown to sharpen visual attention (Green & Bavelier, 2003). Synapse Run is a game for practice and fun, not a medical treatment.