BrainExplorer

Why do most mental health problems arise during adolescence? How is this related to brain development? Jacobs Foundation Research Fellow Tobias Hauser has developed a series of new and entertaining games that use state-of-the-art neuroscience to probe brain functions.

BrainExplorer is a ‘citizen science project’, so everyone can be a researcher and help to understand the mysteries of the brain. Users travel through the universe as a space explorer and solve puzzles, which are based on insights from current brain research. Each game played contributes to research at the Developmental Computational Psychiatry Lab on how brain mechanisms influence how we think and feel.

The project uses the anonymous data collected to look into how brain processes may lead to mental health problems. Based on the findings, the researchers want to build new models to predict emerging psychiatric illnesses, and to help develop new interventions.

Find out more and download the app here.