BrainAware - Support & FAQs

What is BrainAware all about?

Forming daily habits to improve your mental fitness begins with awareness! Use our app to get daily scores on key stress indicators: Cognitive Fitness, Sleep Quality, Social Engagement.
You'll be able to see the trends of your scores in personalised graphs.
To keep track of how lifestyle changes impact your mental fitness, you can add short notes in the app journal.
Using your scores and your notes, you will be able to track, understand, and learn how to manage your mental fitness.

How long until I can see my scores?

Your initial scores take a few days to compute since the app is getting to know your interaction patterns. The time needed for each indicator is shown by the progress bar.

What do the score values mean?

Scores for each indicator are computed on a scale of 0–100. This score also tells you where you stand compared to other people, including those who are not healthy. For instance, if your score is 75, it means that you are doing better than 75% of the population. Scores are divided into three categories: low (0-33), medium (34-66), and high (67-100).
The multi-day scores, averages and trends help you focus on the long-term development of your mental fitness, which is more relevant than daily fluctuations.

Why don’t I see a score for certain days?

For each score, we give you a range that indicates how accurate our score estimate is. This typically depends on intensity of your phone use. For certain phone usage patterns, we don’t get enough data to make a reasonably accurate calculation. On such days, we don’t show you a score. Your score will be computed once you start using your phone regularly again.

Where can I discover how the indicators affect each other?

Relations is the tab of the Dashboard which lets you see the trend history of your scores for all the indicators at the same time. This way, you will be able to discover how the indicators affect each other and how you can better manage them.

Why is the Journal useful?

Using the Journal feature, you can check what behavioural changes happened before a change in the trend of your scores, so you can discover how different lifestyle changes are related to your scores. They can help you understand your ups and downs and be a good starting point to form new habits.
Your journal entries do not affect your scores.
In all 14 days and 6 weeks graphs of the app, you may see dots under some days which indicates that you have entered notes for those days. You can click on one of these dots and the journal entries will be displayed in a popup so you don’t have to go to the Journal to see it.

Is BrainAware a medical device?

No, BrainAware is not intended for medical purposes. The app is not a medical device, and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. The information contained in our services is for informational purposes only and not a substitute for professional health or medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. You should not rely solely on this information. Always consult a health or medical professional to address your particular needs and circumstances prior to making any health or medical decision.

How do I know the app is working?

A small '~ba' symbol is continuously displayed in the header at the top of your phone screen while the app is running.
Note: This does not apply to users with Android 13 operating system or higher who have not given the app permission to receive notifications.

How do I hide the '~ba' in the notification tray and the notification bar?

1. Long press on the notification in the notification tray. 2. Select "Turn off notifications". 3. Disable the toggle "BrainAware displaying over other apps".

Which permissions have to be enabled on my phone?

The app requires two permissions “Display over other apps” and “Usage access”. The only data the app collects through the first permission is the timing patterns of your taps. The app cannot record where you tap or the content of your screen in any form. The app will not display anything on your screen when you’re not using it. The only data the app can collect through the second permission are the names of the apps and how often you use them. The app does not record any content from your apps or any other details.

To help us deliver even more precise insights into your sleep patterns, we recommend granting the permission for “Physical Activity”. This permission allows access to the type of activity, such as walking, running, traveling by car, including the raw data from the respective sensors such as accelerometer, pedometer, gyroscope. With this permission, the app cannot track where you are.

Do I have to keep opening the app to ensure it keeps running?

In principle, you don’t have to open the app to keep it running in the background. The app relaunches by itself. However, we recommend adjusting your phone's battery settings. This will ensure the app runs smoothly in the background without interruption, while still consuming very little battery power. To do this, open 'Battery optimisation' in the app settings and the relevant instructions will open.

The background tracking of the app stops working from time to time. What can I do?

In some cases, your phone’s operating system may stop our app from running, e.g. due to extreme battery saving or low battery. To prevent this, we recommend adjusting your phone's battery settings. This will ensure the app runs smoothly in the background without interruption, while still consuming very little battery power. To do this, open 'Battery optimisation' in the app settings and the relevant instructions will open. Alternatively, simply open the app once a day.

Why does it sometimes show high battery consumption in the phone settings?

In exceptional situations, it may happen that the battery consumption in the phone settings is temporarily displayed mistakenly higher than it actually is. The reason for this is that the operating system attributes inexplicable energy consumption, e.g., in the event of battery problems, to those apps that are running in the background.

Has this been scientifically validated?

Yes, there are 20+ studies ongoing or completed, and more to come. We work in a broad ecosystem of renowned scientific institutions, and our publications are featured in top-rated peer reviewed journals.
Further information can be found in the Science section of the QuantActions website.

Why touchscreen taps?

Traditionally, only laboratory-based tests and expensive imaging provide reliable data on the health of the brain. QuantActions has developed a new way of deriving such insights in a user-friendly and economical way - purely from the way a user interacts with their smartphone touchscreen. It turns out that these screen touches contain very rich information about the state of the brain, for example relating to fine motor skills.

What data do you collect?

We focus only on touchscreen taps: We register when the user touches the screen to type or navigate. Important: We only collect the timing patterns of screen touches, not what is typed or where the user clicks. We do not collect any content, we only look at the timing patterns: tap - no tap - tap - no tap. Sounds simple, yet from this we can derive powerful insights into the user’s brain health.

For more information, please read our  Privacy Policy.

How do you derive insights?

The timing data of the taps is sent to our server in regular intervals, where our powerful AI algorithms compare them to our database of clinical data and can detect patterns (“behavioral markers”). For example, the speed of tapping provides insights into the user's cognitive speed (how well the brain performs). Even very subtle changes in tapping speed over time can reveal changes in brain health, such as those that can occur with fatigue or burnout.

How is Cognitive Fitness measured?

We assess how your brain works without you having to take lots of tests. We start by looking at a variety of timing patterns of your smartphone interactions, such as your touches on the screen or keyboard. Using this information, we create a behaviour map that shows your unique patterns.
Our AI model has been trained to recognise patterns in this map associated with the outcome of certain cognitive tests in controlled settings. Instead of making you undergo multiple tests, our model can predict your potential performance on these tests just by looking at your behavioural map.
In the end, our model puts all these predictions together to give you a cognitive fitness score, offering insight into how fit your brain is.

Good to know: The score will be even more precise if you enter your year of birth in the app settings.

How is Sleep Quality measured?

Although we do not record exactly when you sleep, using your smartphone taps our algorithm can accurately estimate the likelihood of when you are sleeping. Using this data, our algorithm can accurately predict your daily sleep-wake cycle. This method has been scientifically validated in comparison with traditional sleep tracking devices.

How is Social Engagement measured?

Using our algorithm, we measure the level of social usability of a range of apps and capture the time you spend on them as well as your taps while using them. Again, we do not record any of the content of your app or what you do on them at any time or in any form, merely the time you spend using them and your tap movements on them.

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