"Brain development" gets thrown around so loosely in this industry that it's stopped meaning anything to most parents — and honestly, they're right to be skeptical. So instead of that phrase, here's what we actually mean: our goal isn't to make children calculate faster. It's to help them build the ability to think — to hold information in mind, visualise it, react to it, and manipulate it with control. Calculation speed is just the visible side-effect.
To do that, Udaan's curriculum runs on five distinct methods. Each one is built around a specific, real, and — where the evidence exists — independently studied cognitive mechanism.
The Abacus (Soroban)
Where every child starts: the physical 17-rod soroban. Children learn to move beads accurately and quickly to represent and calculate numbers — building speed, precision, and number sense through repeated, structured practice.
What's genuinely happening here goes beyond arithmetic. Moving beads in a precise sequence is a motor-planning task, and neuroimaging studies have found engagement of the premotor cortex and supplementary motor area (SMA) — the brain regions responsible for planning and sequencing coordinated movement.
Finger Abacus — "Magic Fingers"
No physical tool here — children represent numbers directly on their fingers (thumb = 5, each finger = 1) and shape their hands into number-values instantly as they hear them called out. This is closely related to Chisanbop (Korean "finger calculation"), developed in the 1940s.
What this method genuinely trains is reaction time and finger coordination — how quickly a child can turn something they hear into an accurate hand movement.
Visual Abacus — Eyes-Closed Visualisation
Once a child is fluent on the physical abacus, we train them to close their eyes and "see" the abacus in their mind — moving imagined beads to calculate without any physical tool at all. In research, this technique is known as mental abacus or anzan, and it's the most rigorously studied part of this entire field.
A randomised controlled trial published in Child Development, run in schools in Gujarat, found that children trained in mental abacus showed measurably stronger arithmetic gains than children given standard extra math instruction.
Vision Abacus — Eyes-Open, 3D Visualisation
This is a step further: visualising the abacus with eyes open, as if projected onto the space in front of the child — closer to how an architect holds a 3D layout "in the air" while working. It demands real concentration, since the child has to hold that imagined image steady while ignoring everything actually in front of their eyes.
We want to be precise: this comparison to design professionals is an illustration of the kind of visualisation skill involved, not a claim that abacus training produces professional-grade design ability.
Screen Abacus
Numbers flash on a screen in rapid succession while the child calculates on the abacus simultaneously — training them to take in a number as a whole visual pattern almost instantly, rather than reading it digit by digit.
We used to describe this as building "photographic memory." We don't anymore: true photographic (eidetic) memory is extremely rare, and no training method has been shown to produce it. What this method does genuinely build is rapid visual number recognition and chunking — the same real expertise effect seen in classic research on chess masters instantly recognising board positions.
How the two hands fit together
Several of these methods, especially Finger Abacus, deliberately use both hands together. Each hand's fine motor control is largely managed by the opposite side of the brain, so bilateral finger movement genuinely does require both hemispheres' motor networks to coordinate through the corpus callosum — a real and well-studied form of bimanual coordination.
A note on honesty: You may have heard this described elsewhere as "activating the right brain." We don't use that language. The idea that people are cleanly "left-brained" or "right-brained" is one of the most well-documented misconceptions in education — studied directly in surveys of teacher beliefs, including research by Dekker et al. published in Frontiers in Psychology (2012). Real neuroimaging shows distributed activity across visuospatial and motor-planning networks in both hemispheres.
Why we teach it this way
Put together, these five methods don't just make a child fast at sums. Method 1 builds precision and motor control. Method 2 builds reaction time. Methods 3 and 4 build visualisation and sustained focus — arguably the most transferable skills of all. Method 5 builds rapid pattern recognition. Together, that's what we mean when we say Udaan is training how a child thinks, not just what they can calculate.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is abacus training only about calculation speed?
No. Speed is one visible outcome, but each of Udaan's 5 methods is built around a different underlying cognitive skill — motor planning, reaction time, visuospatial working memory, sustained visualisation, and rapid pattern recognition — not calculation alone.
Is mental abacus (eyes-closed visualisation) actually backed by research?
Yes. Mental abacus, sometimes called anzan, is one of the most studied techniques in this field, including a randomised controlled trial published in the journal Child Development that was conducted in Indian schools.
Does abacus training create photographic memory?
No, and we won't claim it does. What Udaan's Screen Abacus method genuinely builds is rapid visual number recognition and chunking.
Does abacus training work by activating the "right brain"?
We don't use that framing, because the strict left-brain/right-brain dichotomy is a well-documented misconception in educational neuroscience.
References • Peer-Reviewed
- Hanakawa, T., et al. (2003). Neural correlates underlying mental calculation in abacus experts: a functional imaging study. NeuroImage.
- Barner, D., et al. (2016). Learning Mathematics in a Visuospatial Format: A Randomized, Controlled Trial of Mental Abacus Instruction. Child Development, 87(4), 1146–1158.
- Chase, W. G., & Simon, H. A. (1973). Perception in chess. Cognitive Psychology, 4(1), 55–81.
- Dekker, S., et al. (2012). Neuromyths in education. Frontiers in Psychology, 3, 429.