What is N-Back?

N-Back is one of the most heavily studied tasks in cognitive psychology. A cell lights up on a 3×3 grid, one turn at a time, and your job is to notice when the current cell matches the one you saw 2 turns ago. This “2-back” version is the classic starting point used in decades of working-memory research.

How to play

1. 1Watch the grid — one of the nine cells lights up each turn, roughly every second and a half.
2. 2Hold the last two positions in mind and compare each new cell with the one from 2 turns back.
3. 3Tap Match — or press Space — the moment you see a repeat.
4. 4The round runs 22 turns and is scored on accuracy: spot every repeat, and hold back when it isn’t one.

What it trains

Working-memory updating — holding a moving window of information in mind, refreshing it every turn, and resisting the pull of what you saw most recently. That constant update-and-overwrite is much closer to real-life attention than one-shot memorization.

A fair note, in the spirit of our About page: this is a training game, not therapy. N-Back has fueled hundreds of studies — and a long debate about how far the gains transfer. Treat it as a short daily workout for focus, and track your own numbers.