Visual Memory
A clinical measure of your visuospatial working memory capacity. Squares flash briefly — memorize their positions, then click them back. Each round adds more squares and a larger grid.
Visuospatial Working Memory
Watch the squares · Remember · Repeat
01 /How to Play
- Click 'Begin Protocol' to start.
- A grid will appear with some squares highlighted in white — memorize their positions.
- The squares will disappear — click all the positions that were highlighted.
- Each correct round adds more highlighted squares and increases the grid size.
- One wrong click ends the test — your score is the level you reached.
02 /The Science
Visuospatial working memory — the capacity to temporarily store and manipulate spatial location information — is mediated primarily by the right hemisphere parietal and occipital cortices, with executive coordination from the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Baddeley's model of working memory identifies a dedicated visuospatial sketchpad subsystem for this function, separate from verbal working memory. Spatial memory capacity is strongly predictive of performance in fields requiring mental rotation and spatial reasoning, including architecture, surgery, and engineering. Impairment in visuospatial working memory is an early marker of several neurodegenerative conditions.
03 /Pro Tips
- Scan the grid in a consistent pattern (e.g., top-left to bottom-right) to ensure you don't miss any highlighted squares.
- Create verbal labels for positions ('top-left corner', 'center') to engage dual-coding memory.
- For larger grids, chunk positions into quadrants and memorize each quadrant separately.
- Click from memory in the same scanning order you used to study the grid.
- Speed is irrelevant during recall — accuracy is everything.