What Keel Measures — and Why
Cognition is not one thing. Each domain — processing speed, working memory, spatial reasoning, semantic fluency, executive function — changes differently with age, is affected by different conditions, and signals different things when it declines. These guides explain each domain, what changes are normal, and what Keel tracks.
Processing Speed: What It Is and Why It Changes With Age
Processing speed is the rate at which your brain performs mental operations. It is one of the first cognitive abilities to show age-related change — and one of the most measurable.
Working Memory: What It Is and Why It Changes With Age
Working memory is the brain's mental scratch pad — the system that holds and manipulates information in real time. It is central to reasoning, learning, and following complex instructions.
Spatial Reasoning: What It Is and Why It Changes With Age
Spatial reasoning is the ability to perceive, manipulate, and navigate spatial relationships. It is one of the most evolutionarily ancient cognitive abilities — and one that shows consistent age-related change.
Semantic Fluency: What It Is and Why It Changes With Age
Semantic fluency is the brain's ability to rapidly search and retrieve organized conceptual knowledge — words, categories, names, and facts. It is a window into how efficiently your language and memory networks are communicating.
Executive Function: What It Is and Why It Changes With Age
Executive function is the brain's management system — the set of cognitive controls that govern planning, decision-making, impulse control, and mental flexibility. It is the most distinctly human of our cognitive abilities.
Episodic Memory: What It Is and Why It Changes With Age
Episodic memory is memory for personal experiences — what happened, when it happened, and where. It is the memory system most commonly affected by both normal aging and early Alzheimer's disease.
Attention: What It Is and Why It Changes With Age
Attention is not a single ability but a family of cognitive controls that govern what your brain processes and what it ignores. Its changes with age are subtle but have cascading effects on nearly every other cognitive domain.
Verbal Recall: What It Is and Why It Changes With Age
Verbal recall is the ability to retrieve previously heard or read information. It is one of the most practical cognitive abilities in daily life — and one of the most sensitive to the changes of both normal aging and early cognitive impairment.
Reaction Time: What It Is and Why It Changes With Age
Reaction time is a direct measure of neural processing speed — how long it takes your nervous system to detect, process, and respond to a stimulus. It is one of the most objective and reliable windows into cognitive aging.
Visuospatial Ability: What It Is and Why It Changes With Age
Visuospatial ability is how well your brain perceives, processes, and acts on visual-spatial information. It governs everything from reading a map to parking a car — and it changes in characteristic ways that are both detectable and informative.
See all your domains in one trend line
Keel tests five domains in four minutes a day. Over weeks, you build a multi-domain picture of your cognitive baseline — and can see which domains are stable, which are varying, and which might be shifting.
Free to start. No account required. Not a diagnostic tool.