Eva Perdiguer, Director of the Postgraduate degree in Educational Technology and a Professor in the Faculty of Education, has created an application for smartphones called NeuroMath, to work on mental skills and calculations. She and her husband Jordi Sánchez – who is also a professor on the Postgraduate programme – work together under the name of Imathings.
“Imagining amazing things”: is the motto which Eva Perdiguer and Jordi Sánchez use for their small business, “which is simply the result of putting a hobby into practice”, says Perdiguer. Thus “by using up their spare time” they have created various applications for smartphones, such as SOS Info, for which they received an award from Barcelona City Council.
NeuroMath, the latest one they have created, is a game involving mental skills and calculations. A series of calculations are provided (adding, subtracting...), and participants must indicate whether the result is correct or not. The application times participants, and the different levels make the game more complicated. “Your challenge - explains Eva - is to improve on the result you obtained previously”. Thus, the aim behind the application is to work on different cognitive skills in order to “make your brain work”. “By promoting these skills you can achieve better academic results and- as Professor Perdiguer states- playing for ten minutes every day, as recommended in the application’s description, means that changes are also observed in adults: they gain in mental agility”.
“It is a simple game - she continued - but it really does have a neuroscientific basis and we wanted to add this to the long experience Jordi has in his field so as to create a simple and useful product”.
