Tests for measuring cognitive functionality?

[Toge]

I was wondering if there are any standard tests for measuring how well one's brain works at a certain point of time. There are several factors that can hinder optimal performance. Being tired, hungry or being in a room with high carbon dioxide concentration can all make person feel sluggish. The problem is that poor performace can be hard to detect. Missing obvious things because of extreme tiredness, for example, can show itself pretty arbitrarily. You don't know what you don't know.

What I mean by cognitive functionality? Alertness, short-term memory, creativity. Things that change depending on person's state of mind.

[Joaz Banbeck]

Please pardon the quibble, but I thought that increased C02 made a person anxious, not sluggish.

And, yes, there is a good test for cognitive funtion. You start with a piece of wood and a bunch of stones...

[Toge]

Anxiousness is associated with hypocapnia (wiki), less than normal level of co2 in blood. Hypercapnia, which is opposite of that causes drowsiness. That's why it's recommended to keep breaks between school classes.

Two-player games are problematic, since the result is always relative rather than absolute. Learning also skews results. I used to solve easy Sudoku problems with a program that times your performance (Black Belt Sudoku). Of course this isn't scientific, but I noticed several minute differences in solving times when I was tired.

[Joaz Banbeck]

Are we talikng about apples or oranges here? Concentration in the blood or in the room?

[Toge]

Good question. I implicitly thought that being in a room with high CO2 concentration is detrimental to health because the person inhales it, which causes blood CO2 level to rise. That in turn leads to drowsiness and other symptoms of hypercapnia. Picture in wiki says so.

[Joaz Banbeck]

Hmm... I was thinking of things like this: http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/cgi/conten ... ct/45/1/43

[chef]

They say that Brain age and games like it are good for measuring that. I play Brain age myself.

[Andd]

Medically it is a neuropsyche evaluation
http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/317596-overview

[jts]

A neuropsychological evaluation is what a doctor does to see if you've suffered brain damage or neurological deterioration (i.e., your eyes can't follow a finger, you can't remember numbers, you can't draw a clock face). I believe Toge is talking about variations in one healthy individual's cognitive functions.

What's wrong with an IQ test? If you wanted something quick and dirty, you could make a gmail account, set the "mail goggles" to a setting that you find fairly challenging, and then only play go when you can answer the question in the alloted time. (Mail googles wouldn't provide a measurement, but it would let you set a specific benchmark and determine whether you're above or below that benchmark at any given time.)