How fast is your brain really?
Five quick reactions. We drop your best and worst, average the rest, and compare against published age-band benchmarks (Deary & Der 2005; Woods et al. 2015).
How it works
01
Wait for gold
Screen turns purple. Stay calm. After a random 1.5-5 seconds it flashes gold.
02
Click fast
Tap or click the instant it turns gold. We measure your reaction in milliseconds.
03
Five rounds
We drop your best and your worst, then average the rest for a stable score.
Click too early = round restarts. Make sure you are alert, caffeine-stable, and not multitasking for best accuracy.
How your reaction age is calculated
- What this number is
- A simple visual reaction-time test, reported as the age band whose average reaction time is closest to yours. It is a measure of how fast you pressed a button today, nothing more.
- What it uses
- Five visual stimulus reactions. Your fastest and slowest are discarded and the middle three are averaged, which reduces the effect of one lucky or one distracted press.
- How it is weighted
- The average is compared against published age-band reaction-time norms. The NORMS are from the literature; the exact millisecond cut-offs used to place you in a band are OURS, chosen to sit sensibly between those published averages.
- What it is NOT
- It is not a cognitive assessment, a dementia screen, or a measure of intelligence. Reaction time varies with sleep, caffeine, screen refresh rate, input device and how much you have practised. A single slow result means very little; a persistent change you have noticed in daily life is worth raising with a doctor.
Why these factors
- Deary IJ, Der G. Reaction time, age, and cognitive ability (Aging Neuropsychol Cogn, 2005).
- Woods DL et al. Factors influencing the latency of simple reaction time (Front Hum Neurosci, 2015).
- Both report population reaction times by age band; neither validates a consumer touchscreen test as an age measurement.
Reference: Deary IJ, Der G. Aging Neuropsychol Cogn. 2005;12:187-215; Woods DL et al. Front Aging Neurosci 2015;7:131. Simple-reaction-time tests are sensitive to caffeine, sleep, distractions and input lag. Re-test under controlled conditions for stable comparison. Persistent sudden slowing of reflexes warrants a clinician visit.