To raise our concentration level, we are required to stimulate more brain activities.

And how then do we increase our concentration level?
The ensuing methods are my recommended suggestions that I would like to introduce and I hope that people would find it useful:

1. Counting
Keep active by counting the number of circles, oval shapes, dots, lines, pixels or any small objects that can be referenced from the photo.
This provides you with better opportunity of spotting the differences in the pictures when the discrepancies are not obvious to the eyes.
As such, the idea is essentially to promote brain activity in the left brain’s cerebral cortex on the basis that numbers and sequences are involved (Buzan 2007).

2. Reasoning
Put yourself in the creator’s shoe. From the past photos that you have played with, ask yourself this simple question: does the creator have the tendency of clustering the differences or segregating them into distinct objects?

If the latter is found to be true, then we can safely assume that once a discrepancy is found, there is no need to search the same object over and over again as this result in unnecessary time loss. It is intuitive that you shift your focus onto another disparate object and thereby, embracing prioritisation.

3. Group Them into Different Parts
When a photo is messy and it contains many disparate objects, simply group them into parts to prevent your brain from shutting off due to the overload of information.

4. Arousing Interest
If you are NOT enjoying yourself while searching for the differences in the photos, your brain will reduce the stimulation of brain activities.
Thus, it is of paramount important that you talk to yourself whilst looking through the photos (eg. “wow.. the scenery in the photo is beautiful”). Also, you can relate to any familiar memories that are already stored within your brain.
This interest stimulated promotes brain activity in the right brain’s cerebral cortex: imagination, daydreaming, colour, spatial awareness and dimension (Buzan 2007).

Overall, when all these methods are mutually incorporated, any differences in the photos can be spotted at ease and this provides you with the ability to achieve top scores without any difficulty. Please note that these methods introduced are not exhaustive. To those interested in playing this game, Facebook has a game called ’spot the difference’, go check it out and impress your friends now.

PS: My two cents worth.