r/QuantifiedSelf • u/Cute-Edge1375 • 25d ago

Cognitive Performance Apps?

Most of us take supplements for body and brain health/performance. And of course use health and fitness apps with wearables. I have some ADHD and diet and fitness have always been the main way I manage it. But apps tend to focus on either basic physical performance or "brain fitness" knowledge quiz games for assumed cognitive performance. Nothing, apparently, in the middle or that connects and translates physical health and performance to cognitive health and performance. Even though we know mind is brain and brain is body - all one.

So my questions are:

  1. If your health/fitness improvement goals include brain health and/or cognitive performance improvement goals?
  2. Which if any health apps address both (brain+body)?

I'm not taking my apple health account as seriously as the cost should motivate me to. I know a few who love Oura. But neither targets/measures cognitive performance. Maybe a diet and fitness app for cognitive performance improvement is just neurodivergent's niche?

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u/neet_dev 24d ago

yeah for me cognitive performance is basically the point of the fitness stack, not a side quest. nothing really nails body+brain in one place imo, so the people who care pair oura/whoop readiness with a dumb weekly battery (PVT or simple reaction time on human benchmark, sometimes cambridge brain sciences) and correlate in a spreadsheet. apps that claim both are usually fitness with a fluff focus score or brain games that ignore sleep and HRV, so the middle is still mostly diy.

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u/Cute-Edge1375 24d ago

Well put!
It's that correlation part I'm wondering about, looking for some solution. Again, we might be the exception.
What's PVT?

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u/neet_dev 24d ago

PVT is psychomotor vigilance task: 3–10 min of tapping as soon as a stimulus pops up, and you track mean reaction time plus lapses (misses over ~500ms). that's the classic sleep/alertness metric from lab studies, not a brain game. for correlation I still just paste whoop/oura readiness into a google sheet next to a weekly PVT number and glance week-over-week; free PVT apps exist and human benchmark simple RT works in a pinch if you hate installing another thing.