Strong Mind Puzzles is a brain-training iPhone App
Donalee Markus certainly knew what she was doing when she designed Strong Mind Puzzles as an app for the iPhone. With 29 years of neuro-cognitive development practice under her proverbial belt, she is an expert in helping people to become more intelligent, largely through the use of puzzles, of which she has created thousands, some for general use and others for very specific neuro-developmental challenges.
Markus did post-graduate work in communicative disorders, and has a Ph.D in business administration and management sciences from Northwestern University. She is president of Designs for Strong Minds and co-author of ‘Retrain your Business Brain’, and ‘The Road Trip: A parable about where to lead, when to follow and how to get out of the way’.
With a private practice in a suburb of Chicago, Markus works with children, adolescents and adults to strengthen weak thinking skills. The work could be as relatively ‘simple’ as helping someone who is weak in math become competent in it, or as complex as helping a child born with half a brain to develop as robust a cognitive reality as possible. She developed a critical thinking skills program for NASA scientists to catalyze communication skills and creativity and has worked with major corporations to enhance mental flexibility and complex problem solving.
The iPhone app, known as Strong Mind Puzzles is designed to enhance concentration, memory and problem-solving skills. There are nine levels in the game, constituting thousands of individual exercises. Players become better at learning from past experiences and generating alternative solutions to problems. It is easy to learn the rules for the game and, from my personal experience, pretty addictive once one starts playing. I got to Level 8 and had to tear myself away!
Markus chose puzzles for the iPhone app that would benefit the greatest number of people. “The puzzles address the pre-frontal cortex and therefore the executive functioning of the brain,” she explains in an interview with Better Brain Better Life. “I wanted to help the most people in the most significant way, whether children, seniors, people with traumatic brain injury or busy executives. My husband, a plastic surgeon, enjoys the app and uses different strategies each time he plays the game to think faster and to habituate generating alternatives more quickly.”
The benefits of using puzzles as teaching tools are many, according to Markus. “There’s a playfulness about doing puzzles and we can approach them with a sense of humor, not taking ourselves too seriously. Puzzles also help to develop a propensity for risk taking. One can say, ‘Oh, I don’t know how to do this so I am bound to make mistakes and that is O.K’. It’s about learning a process, rather than focusing only on the product.”
The puzzles are culture-free and don’t require any special knowledge. Early levels involve looking at a grid with four possible basic shapes: a mask, a bus, an apple and a bell. On each screen the player is asked to match the center image with surrounding images, based on ‘same’ or ‘different’ colors and shapes (later screens increase the number of variables and the use of inductive and deductive reasoning skills). One completes a level of 25 screens and is then advised if there are errors, which one can go back and try to correct. Strong Mind Puzzles are fun, good for the brain and inexpensive.
Markus made quite an impression on me an innovator and someone who cares deeply about helping people live happier and more satisfying lives. Stay tuned for a feature story on her life and work.
