An introduction to the Brain Gauge scoring system
In the ProTools (or RxTools) app, your Brain Gauge metrics reflect how your brain performance compares to population averages. If you have a score of 100 for any metric, you performed as good as (or better than) healthy controls from our subject population. We calculated the mean scores for our tests through years of clinical trials.

On the other hand, if you have a low Brain Gauge score (between 0 and 70), you scored poorly on that metric's tests compared to our

The Timing Perception measure (or Duration Discrimination) comes from the test that asks you “which stimulus lasted longer?”. This score is useful on its own, but you can gain even more insight into your brain health by comparing it to your Duration Discrimination with confound score. The difference between these two scores is based on a brain illusion - a mistake that your brain makes when comparing two sensations. But don't worry - if your brain is making this mistake, it means that it's healthy!

How the illusion is created

If you are a Brain Gauge user, you've probably noticed the overall corticalmetric score. This comprehensive measure is calculated from all the tests that were taken in a single test session. If that is a sufficint explanation, then read no further.

When we first started developing cortical metrics – all the different measures collected by the Brain Gauge (and also the name of the company... we realize that can be confusing!) – we wanted to create a unique metric that could summarize the brain profile of each individual. We believe that it

Timing perception is derived from your duration discrimination task. This is the test that asks “Which stimulus lasted longer?” The first trial of the task (during training) delivers a 650 msec duration stimulus to one finger and subsequently a 500 msec duration stimulus to the other (a 150 msec difference). Each time the person taking the test identifies the finger that received the longer stimulus correctly, the difference between the two durations on the next trial is reduced. Most people track down to a difference limen of 35-60 msec, and

Lateral inhibition: using amplitude discrimination to probe the balance between excitation and inhibition
Lateral inhibition is the brain's way of improving contrast between adjacent or near-adjacent cortical areas. In the 1960s, Nobel prize winner Georg Von Bekesy postulated the idea of lateral inhibition. The basic idea was that when you deliver a stimulus, brain activity will be correlated with the stimulus site, and the surrounding areas will be inhibited or turned off. Long story short, Von Bekesy’s predictions, which were based on sensory testing, turned out to be true.

Discussing the Temporal Order Judgement task
One of the cortical metrics that you get is called “TOJ” which stands for Temporal Order Judgement. This test delivers two taps, one to each of the two fingers positioned on the Brain Gauge, and queries “which came first?”. The test starts out easy (taps are initially 150 msec apart) and gets harder each time you get the question right (sort of like reading an eye chart – it gets more difficult the farther you progress). If you look at your TOJ raw score (on

Measuring tactile illusions with Brain Gauge .
Most people are familiar with optical illusions. For example, the one shown here is a context dependent illusion. Glancing at the two sets of circles, it appears that the center circle of the cluster on the left is smaller than the center circle of the cluster on the right. But in fact, the two center circles are of equal size. Why does the brain trick you into thinking this? Part of the answer is that your brain quickly evaluates the center circle in the

Reaction time has been used since the mid-1800s to assess cognitive function, and it is still useful for that today.
The reaction time test has been used for a really long time to investigate nervous system function. Papers written as early as the mid 1800’s describe the reaction time test and since that time, most papers focused on differences in reaction time and other populations. In other words, most of these papers demonstrated comparisons that were made between healthy control populations and populations of individuals that had some condition