Five Meta-Skills
Cognitive training research is best supported on narrow, well-defined skills, not on "general intelligence". BrainGym targets five of them. Each gets its own page with what the research actually says.
Pattern Recognition
Spot the sequence, structure, or anomaly the surface tries to hide.
Working Memory
Hold several pieces of information in mind while doing something with them.
Logical Reasoning
Deduce, decompose, infer. Construct an answer from constraints, not from recall.
Cognitive Flexibility
Switch contexts, adapt to new rules, drop the old frame when it stops fitting.
Processing Speed
Fast accurate decisions under time pressure - without sacrificing accuracy.
Why these five?
Each is well-defined in the cognitive-science literature, has measurable training effects on the trained tasks, and shows up in real-world activities we want to support: reading complex material, debugging, deciding under uncertainty, switching contexts. None of them, on their own, is a magic shortcut to "getting smarter". The honest version is on the methodology page.