State of your brain, the brain rot test in 2 minutes
This test chains three mini games. Reaction time for reflexes, sequence memory for memory, go/no-go for attention. Your reflexes and memory are compared with public Human Benchmark games (Human Benchmark, 2026). Attention has no reliable public norm, so you see your raw score. No test measures brain rot, the word has no medical definition (Oxford University Press, 2024).
- 01 ReflexesTap the moment it turns green. 5 tries.
- 02 MemoryRemember a sequence of squares that light up. About a minute.
- 03 AttentionGreen, you tap. Red, you hold back. 20 seconds.
Trial 1 of 3 · Reflexes
Tap as soon as it turns green.
Five trials, where you wait for the green and then tap, because tapping before it is a false start. Your score is the median of the five.
Space bar works too
Trial 2 of 3 · Memory
Watch the order, then repeat it.
Squares of a 3 by 3 grid light up one after the other. Tap them back in the same order. Each level adds one square, you have two lives.
Trial 3 of 3 · Attention
Tap on green, never on red.
Forty circles flash one after the other, three in four are green. Tap the green ones fast, hold back on the red ones.
Space bar works too
Your state today
Your three numbers.
This does not tell you whether your brain is rotted. It tells you how you played, right now. Take it again after five minutes of scrolling, then after a break away from screens, and compare.
What brain rot means
Oxford University Press made brain rot its word of the year 2024. Its definition speaks of the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental state, blamed on too much trivial content, now mostly online (Oxford University Press, 2024). The word supposed matters. It is a cultural word, not a diagnosis.
So Headgame does not tell you that you have it or not. It gives you something you can check, three scores on tasks that research has used for decades, and a way to compare yourself with yourself.
How your scores are compared
Reflexes, the median of five reaction times, placed in the distribution of public reaction time games on Human Benchmark (Human Benchmark, 2026). Memory, the highest level reached in sequence memory, placed in the same site’s sequence memory games (Human Benchmark, 2026). These are public game distributions, not lab samples, and the people who play them are not a random sample of everyone.
Attention, a go/no-go task, a classic of research on response inhibition (Simmonds et al., 2008). Your score counts taps on red and missed greens. No public norm for this exact version exists, so no percentile is shown.
One try varies. Simple reaction time is among the steadiest measures when tested again weeks later (Woods et al., 2015b), but sleep, the device and the moment change it. Compare several tries, not one.
What this test does not tell you
It is not a medical test. It says nothing about ADHD, memory disorders, depression or any health condition. If something worries you, talk to a doctor.
It does not measure intelligence, IQ or brain age.
One result is a snapshot of today, not a fixed level. Scores often rise with practice on the same task, which does not mean a change outside the game (Simons et al., 2016).
Sources
- Human Benchmark, score distributions embedded in humanbenchmark.com, read on 13 October 2026. Reaction time n 70 940, sequence memory n 35 868, chimp test n 27 233, number memory n 24 084. humanbenchmark.com
- Oxford University Press (2 December 2024). Brain rot named Oxford Word of the Year 2024. Definition, the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material considered to be trivial or unchallenging. corp.oup.com, 2 December 2024
- Simmonds D.J., Pekar J.J., Mostofsky S.H. (2008). Meta-analysis of Go/No-go tasks. Neuropsychologia 46(1), 224 to 232. doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2007.07.015
- Woods D.L., Wyma J.M., Yund E.W., Herron T.J. (2015). The effects of repeated testing, simulated malingering, and traumatic brain injury on high-precision measures of simple visual reaction time. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 9, 540. PMC4637414. doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2015.00540
- Simons D.J., Boot W.R., Charness N. et al. (2016). Do brain training programs work? Psychological Science in the Public Interest 17(3), 103 to 186. doi.org/10.1177/1529100616661983
Headgame
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