Fitness Training for your Brain
Those of you who have been reading my posts on nuts may have noticed that some of their contents improve the function of the brain, e.g. magnesium in brazil nuts and pecans. We can easily forget that our brain is just another organ and needs exercising like the rest of the body.
The following article by Dr Bernard Croisile is an excellent read and will help you understand a bit more about how your brain functions and what you can do to keep mentally fit. He explains how our minds are divided into five main areas: memory, attention, language, visual-spatial skills and executive function and that all these areas need to be stimulated and challenged. Read on and find out how you can effectively exercise that brain of yours…
Five Daily Brain Exercises By: Bernard Croisile, M.D. Neurology, Ph. D. Neuropsychology, CSO HAPPYneuron, Inc.
Neurologist & neuropsychologist Dr. Bernard Croisile, author of Dental Floss for the Mind, Get your Brain in the Fast Lane and Broccoli for the Brain, as well as developers of HAPPYneuron online brain fitness program (www.happy-neuron.com), fill you in how the brains five major cognitive functions are affected by various types of activities.
Many of us are devoted to exercise to bulk up our bodies, but the phrase “use it or lose it” applies to more than just the muscles in our bodies – it also applies to the neural pathways and connections in our brains. There are a variety of exercises and activities that can successfully work each of the brain’s five major cognitive functions on a daily basis. In addition to the tasks you can perform daily, you can also train your brain with HAPPYneuron (www.happy-neuron.com) online brain games and personalized brain fitness program. Our minds consist of five main cognitive functions: Memory, Attention, Language, Visual-Spatial skills and Executive Function, and it is important to challenge, stimulate and effectively exercise all five areas to stay mentally sharp as your brain ages.
1. Memory
Memory plays a crucial role in all cognitive activities, including reading, reasoning and mental calculation. There are several types of memory at work in the brain. Taken together, these are the cognitive skills we may notice most when they begin to fail. To maintain a good memory, you need to train for it, which can be easier than you think. Listening to music is not only enjoyable, but by choosing a song you don’t know and memorizing the lyrics, you boost the level of acetylcholine, the chemical that helps build your brain, and improve your memory skills. Challenge yourself even more by showering or getting dressed in the dark or using your opposite hand to brush your teeth. These challenges help build new associations between different neural connections of the brain.
2. Attention
Attention is necessary in nearly all daily tasks. Good attention enables you to maintain concentration despite noise and distractions and to focus on several activities at once. We can improve our attention by simply changing our routines. Change your route to work or reorganize your desk – both will force your brain to wake up from habits and pay attention again. As we age, our attention span can decrease, making us more susceptible to distraction and less efficient at multitasking. By combining activities like listening to an audio book with jogging or doing math in your head while you drive forces your brain to work at doing more in the same amount of time.
3. Language
Language activities will challenge our ability to recognize, remember and understand words. They also exercise our fluency, grammatical skills and vocabulary. With regular practice, you can expand your knowledge of new words and much more easily retrieve words that are familiar. For example, if you usually only thoroughly read the sports section, try reading a few in-depth business articles. You’ll be exposed to new words, which are easier to understand when read in context or easier to look up on a dictionary site if you are reading the news online. Take time to understand the word in its context, which will help you build your language skills and retrieve the word more readily in front of your boss in the future.
4. Visual-Spatial
We live in a colorful, three-dimensional world. Analyzing visual information is necessary to be able to act within your environment. To work this cognitive function, try walking into a room and picking out five items and their locations. When you exit the room, try to recall all five items and where they were located. Too easy? Wait two hours and try to remember those items and their locations. The next time you’re waiting on your coworker or friend to arrive, try this mental exercise. Look straight ahead and note everything you can see both in front of you and in your peripheral vision. Challenge yourself to recall everything and write it down. This will force you to use your memory and train your brain to focus on your surroundings.
5. Executive Function
Without even realizing it, you use your logic and reasoning skills on a daily basis to make decisions, build up hypotheses and consider the possible consequences of your actions. Activities in which you must define a strategy to reach a desired outcome and calculate the right moves to reach the solution in the shortest possible time are actually fun activities you do daily – like social interaction and, yes, video games. Engaging in a brief visit with a friend boosts your intellectual performance by requiring you to consider possible responses and desired outcomes. Video games require strategy and problem solving to reach a desired outcome—like making it to the final level. “It’s not just Halo honey; I’m exercising my executive brain functions!”
As we age, it’s important to flex our mental muscles as well as our physical ones. Now that you’re aware of the five main cognitive functions and how to exercise them, it will be easy to find daily activities that will help you break a mental sweat and keep your brain in shape. If you need a little structured help, HAPPYneuron has fun and challenging games to work the brain in all five areas, as well as a virtual coach to serve as a personal trainer and ensure you get the most optimal brain workout for you.
Beeble agrees…
So over the Christmas holiday don’t get lazy and just watch a lot of TV, get that brain working: play some games with the family that will exercise your memory and don’t complain during the busy days before Christmas that you are having to do so many different things at once – that will exercise the attention part of your mind.
Practise your language skills by reading some of those books you have been given as presents (and not just the back cover – Beeble). Utilise the visual-spatial part of your mind by looking closely at all the decorations when you visit relatives and try and memorise where they are in the room and then compliment your host on “the wonderful bunch of mistletoe above the fireplace, the interesting lighting arrangement in the hall” and so on.
Finally, as Dr Croisile suggests, if the Christmas festivities all prove a bit too much, or you simply want to get out of helping with all those meals, you can escape and play on a video game, with the perfect excuse that you are exercising your executive brain functions!
Keep your body and your brain active over Christmas and enjoy yourself!
March 7th, 2009 at 1:22 am
Loving the idea of changing things up. Even more of a reason to try new things or change up the old.
Thanks