Life hacks, the internet is full of them. Smart and easy ways to get around the everyday complications of life. These ‘hacks’ really do come handy at times, whether it be putting you phone on airplane mode to avoid in-game ads or putting your car key under your chin to increase it’s range. It just makes sense to have a few ‘smartcuts’ around daily nuances to help improve our lives.

Well, science has decided to level up the game. Recent advances in neuroscience and neurofeedback can now allow you to even “hack” your brain, and that too especially well when it comes to the learning process to help you tackle a lot of problems, but mostly just studying for exams. Amazingly just like the normal ‘life hacks’ these ‘Brain Hacks’ are really easy to integrate into your life. It seems really intuitive that ‘hacking’ your brain to improve its functioning is the next thing you should dive into. Fortunately, people all around the world have made numerous ( and luckily free ) apps to help you do the same. So here is a list of a few brain hacks, both new and not-s0-new, along with their respective apps to help you venture into brain hacking.

Its Flash Card time all over again!

Flashcards have been out there for long, and we have all had a few at some points in our life. Turns out, if used the write way, flashcards can help increase your brain’s retention powers allowing it to memorize things for long time periods. “Spaced Repetition” is the name of the trick that you need to use here. The science behind this says that reviewing information at increasing intervals help you memorize things better. For example, review your study material one day after learning it, then after two days, then four, then eight and so on, and eventually you will be able to remember the information for a longer period of time. Now there are a lot of cool and mostly free softwares out there, but the poster child would be Anki. Anki has been around for a bit and has completely nailed Spaced Repitition in its software.

Time to take a break!

Who thought there should be limit on your math and science homework? Who thought that taking breaks can actually help your brain to work better? Scientists have proved that more than one hour of math-science homework can be too much( Show this to your teacher to prove it ) and that homework should be spread out reasonably. Scientists have also proved that long stretches of work can tire your brain so equal spaces of breaks can help you study better. Both these studies prove that our brains too get worked up and need a break to work better. Although you could manually time your breaks, the Pomodoro technique( 25 minutes of work followed by 5–10 minutes of break )can help you too. The Pomodoro technique has a huge following and that is why the internet and mobile app stores are full of great Pomodoro apps, so all the apps are just a search away.

Oooh, some cozy background noises.

Background noises, White noises, Pink Noises and a few more, the internet is full of these and all of this happened after a scientist proved that background noises ( non-distracting sounds ) can help you focus better on the task at hand. The science behind this is based on the fact that moderate noise levels increase abstract thinking and thus improve creativity and focus levels. Although I would say it is the following of millions of people that really pins down these background noises as completely legit. There are a multitude of apps out there but the major ones would be: Coffitivity and RainyMood .

Tuning your brain to focus better.

It seems very obvious that our brain is working in different ‘modes’ or ‘states’ for different tasks, and now even science backs this opinion. Moreover science now allows us to get into these states without any extra efforts. So essentially, you could come into “studying” mode whenever you choose to. How you change into these states, you may ask? Well it is as simple as listening to a specific audio or watching a specific video. Now, this may seem pretty-much sci-fi and it should! This science of Brain Wave Stimulation is still to join the mainstream and that’s why there are not a lot of apps out there backing this science. Still, if you look hard enough you can find a few ones. Transparent Corp has a great program you can try for free. The Flow Genome Project is doing a whole lot of research on flow states. Brain Juice is a new tool with a quirky mix of Brain Wave Stimulation, Background Noises and Controlled Breathing in one single web-app. This Online Binaural Beat Generator lets you try a multitude of brain waves.

I wrote a lot more about the science behind these “hacks” in a complimentary article here.