First Great Brain Experiment Scientific Papers Published

The White Bat Games developed title The Great Brain Experiment, has grown to become one of the largest cognitive science experiments ever conducted since the game was made available to the public in March 2013. Now, the first two scientific papers based on data collected by the app’s 60,000 players has been published.

One of the papers, published in journal PLOS ONE sets out how data from players playing smartphone apps can be used as reliable scientific data. The researchers explain: “Smartphone users represent a participant pool far larger and more diverse than could ever be studied in the laboratory. By 2015, there will be an estimated two billion smartphone users worldwide. In time, data from simple apps could be combined with medical, genetic or lifestyle information to provide a novel tool for risk prediction and health monitoring.”

The second paper looks at the results from one of the first four games in the app, ‘How Much Can I Remember?’. It compares results from The Great Brain Experiment, taken from the large sample of app users, with a smaller study conducted under lab conditions. The study looks at how people’s working memory is affected by the presence of distracting elements at various points during a memory test.

Other papers are being worked on based on the game’s experimental results, so this is far from the last set of discoveries to be made from the tens of thousands of people having fun with the games. Keep playing, and you could be a part of the next set of discoveries!