The Gymchess startup has developed an app for mobile devices (both Android and iOS) that aims to delay brain aging and try to prevent cognitive decline through chess-based exercises.
Presented at the Spanish Pavilion at the Dubai International Exhibition, to use the Gymchess application you do not need knowledge of chess, but take advantage of all the resources offered by this game to design tasks in which you different cognitive functions are trained. Very basic chess concepts only appear as the series of exercises are carried out, and they are also learned in a natural and intuitive way.
The Gymchess app helps delay brain aging and prevent cognitive decline through chess-based exercises
Gymchess allows you to train the following cognitive functions: Perception, Attention, Memory, Reasoning and Executive functions. And from each of them, various subsystems are worked on at the same time to offer a genuine cognitive training-rehabilitation system. To do this, it is based on Cognitive Training Method and ECAM Chesswhich for more than ten years was designed and put into practice through multiple workshops -not only with the elderly, but with other groups where the system could be applied with guarantees- especially in Extremadura.
This method was created by psychologist Juan Antonio Montero and his team of professionals from Club Magic Extremadura Deportivo-Social, a prestigious chess entity that combines social and therapeutic work taking advantage of the synergies offered by this game. Montero, together with the journalist and scientific disseminator Leontxo Garcia, and Asier RufinoCEO of Tecnalia Ventures are the co-founders of a startup that has the support of the Basque Government and the Gipuzkoa Provincial Council through the program .
The application is characterized by offering a varied type of exercises (more than 2,500) grouped into series of similar exercises. A peculiarity of Gymchess is that it incorporates a starting point for the user: it is what its creators have called ‘cognitive score’: Before diving into the many exercises offered by the application, the user has the possibility to obtain an indicative score on your ability in each of these capacities. Thus, a cognitive score is achieved for perceptive capacity, attentional capacity, memory, etc., which will undoubtedly increase as they practice Gymchess.
Users have numerous sets of exercises that allow a progressive improvement and be able to overcome one’s own limits without the need for enormous efforts, so natural, pleasant and playfulbecause the creators have wanted to be faithful to the essence that this method is really based on a game, but without forgetting the fundamental criteria of cognitive training: systematized, well-structured practice, focused on specific capacities and of increasing difficulty.
It is also a very useful tool to be administered by specialists in therapeutic or pedagogical approachessince by being able to select the type of skill that you want to work on, it is possible personalize cognitive training according to the characteristics of each patient,