A part of Barbara Arrowsmith-Young's brain was not functioning properly so she developed a series of cognitive exercises to develop it. As of now, she and her team have created cognitive exercises that help improve 19 distinct cognitive functions centered around reading, writing, maths, general comprehension, logical reasoning, visual memory or auditory processing.

In the beginning, Barbara's mother, a teacher, developed a series of flash cards with numbers and letters and, Barbara worked hard on them, and eventually she achieved some literacy and numeracy.

• Later, Barbara drew 100 two-handed clockfaces on cards, each one telling a different time, and wrote the time each told on the back of the card. Then she started trying to tell the time from each, checking on the back each time to see if she was right. She did this eight to 10 hours a day. Gradually, she got faster and more accurate. Then she added a third hand, to make the task more difficult. Then a fourth, for tenths of a second, and a fifth, for days of the week.

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