BRAIN 3D ANATOMY QUIZ:
TAP 236 BRAIN STRUCTURES, THEN BEAT BRAIN QUEST

What Is the Brain 3D Anatomy Quiz?

The Brain 3D Anatomy Quiz is a free portrait educational game for phones and desktop. A real 3D brain shows the gyri and sulci of each lobe, the deep structures such as the thalamus, hippocampus and basal nuclei, the cerebellum and the brainstem. Tap any of 236 brain structures and the game shows its anatomical name, the body region it belongs to, and, for the major parts, a short fact. Region buttons let you show or hide the cerebrum, deep structures, cerebellum or brainstem so you can study one area at a time. When you are ready, Start Brain Quest Quiz opens a 12-question quiz that asks you to tap a named part, name a highlighted part, or answer an anatomy fact.

It is a Three.js game that runs as a 3D browser game on WebGL, developed by Shane Brumback and hosted by Indie Forge Studio, where you can play it at indieforgestudio.com/games/anatomy-brain/. It is free with no download. The 3D model comes from Z-Anatomy and is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. It is a learning tool, not for diagnosis or clinical use.

How to Play the Brain 3D Anatomy Quiz

• Explore: press Tap to Play, then drag with one finger or the mouse to rotate the model. Pinch, or use the mouse wheel, to zoom. Two fingers pan the view.
• Identify: tap or click a part, such as the precentral gyrus or the cerebellum, to see its name, region and a short fact in the bottom panel. A cyan highlight marks the part you picked, and a Did you know? card adds a fact. Thin parts are easy to hit because the game also checks a small ring around your finger. On a computer, hovering with the mouse previews a part before you click.
• Regions: show or hide the cerebrum, deep structures, cerebellum or brainstem. Isolate keeps only the region of the selected part and frames it in the camera. Show all and Reset view bring the whole model back.
• Labels: turn name labels on or off. On a computer the labels sit in columns beside the model with thin leader lines to each part, so they never cover it. On a phone only the part you tap is labelled.
• Brain Quest: start the 12-question quiz. Five questions ask you to tap a named part on the model, four ask you to name the highlighted part, and three are multiple-choice facts that light up the parts they are about, then flash the right answer green and a wrong pick red. You can skip a tap question, and Esc quits back to explore mode. A to D or 1 to 4 answer a multiple-choice question. M mutes the quiz chimes.

How the Brain Quest Quiz Is Scored

Each correct answer scores 100 points plus 20 points for every answer already in your streak, so a longer streak is worth more. A miss or a skip resets the streak to zero. After the last question you see a rank, up to three stars, your accuracy and your best streak. Nine or more correct answers out of twelve (70 percent) earns the Neuro Expert badge. Your best score is saved on this device.

How It Is Built with Three.js

The game runs on the same reusable IFS MedSim anatomy engine as the Skeletal System 3D Anatomy Quiz. Each game in the series is one configuration file (regions, colours, key parts, facts and quiz settings) plus one compressed model, on a self-hosted Three.js build. The model is an embedded .gltf file rather than a .glb, so it deploys cleanly with the rest of the Indie Forge Studio site.

• A GLTFLoader with the Meshopt decoder loads the compressed model. Each mesh carries its Z-Anatomy name and hierarchy chain, and the first matching region rule on that chain assigns it to a body region. Left and right sides share a base name, so both sides count as the same part in the quiz.
• Each lobe has its own colour: frontal, parietal, temporal, occipital and limbic, with the cerebellum, brainstem and deep nuclei in their own shades. Hover, selection, correct and missed states swap in cyan, green or red emissive materials.
• Picking uses a Three.js raycaster. When a tap misses, the game casts a few more rays in a small ring around the finger, so thin vessels, nerves and ducts are still easy to select.
• Orbit controls handle rotate, zoom and pan with damping, and selecting a part, isolating a region or revealing a quiz answer eases the camera to frame it.
• The quiz shuffles a fresh set of five tap, four name and three fact questions each run. The flow follows the Falcon 9 Pad Quest quiz: streak scoring, a progress bar, a rank and stars, and a high score in local storage.

The parts were extracted from the Z-Anatomy collection in Blender, with curves such as vessels and nerves turned into light tube meshes, then decimated, welded, quantized and meshopt-compressed for phones. No non-commercial Z-Anatomy content is included: the inner ear (University of Dundee, CC BY-NC-SA) and the kidney (Lissie Cowley, CC BY-NC) were left out.

Educational Use

Each lobe has its own colour, so students can see the frontal, parietal, temporal and occipital lobes at a glance, then hide the cerebrum to reveal the deep structures underneath. Brain Quest asks them to find structures such as the precentral gyrus or the cerebellum and answers facts such as which lobe processes vision or which structure is key for forming new memories.

The models are simplified for the web and for learning. They are not a medical atlas and are not for diagnosis or clinical use. For a longer walkthrough of how these anatomy games are put together, see the Building 3D Medical Simulations tutorial. More games in the IFS MedSim 3D anatomy series: Skeletal System 3D Anatomy Quiz, Cardiovascular System 3D Anatomy Quiz, Lymphatic System 3D Anatomy Quiz, Muscular System 3D Anatomy Quiz, Joints & Ligaments 3D Anatomy Quiz, Nervous System 3D Anatomy Quiz, Digestive System 3D Anatomy Quiz, Respiratory System 3D Anatomy Quiz. Browse them all on the 3D anatomy games page.

Credits and License

Anatomy models: Z-Anatomy (CC BY-SA 4.0), based on BodyParts3D, © The Database Center for Life Science (CC BY-SA 2.1 JP). Z-Anatomy adapted parts of the brain from the Brainder and White Matter references. The modified meshes used in the game and in this page's background are shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. The game itself is hosted only on Indie Forge Studio; this article links to that live game.

Built for Mobile and Portrait Play

The Brain 3D Anatomy Quiz is designed for a phone held upright. A top bar holds Back, How to Play, mute and credits. The model fills the view, and a collapsible bottom sheet holds the info card, region buttons, Isolate, Labels and Reset view, and the quiz start button. On a desktop, Did you know? facts appear beside the model with a leader line; on a phone they slide up as a compact card. Pointer and touch share one picking path, and two-finger gestures pan while a drag rotates.

Frequently Asked Questions