Category — Brain Training Activities

For the ultimate Sudoku gaming experience on the Nintendo DS, Brain Age Express: Sudoku will be perfectly suited to any level of puzzle-solving fanatic. There will be no better way to give your brain a better work out. With this popular release from the Brain Age series, you will be able to track your progress after completing three tests, when you can then discover your ‘Brain Age’.

This interactive Sudoku game will be the ideal gift for any Nintendo DS fans and is certain to get newcomers hooked. Via the Touch Screen and intuitive interface a range of different puzzles will be right at your fingertips. Never has brain boosting been so much fun!

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If you wish to prevent Alzheimer’s disease or dementia till a ripe old age, it is important to keep your brain stimulated with intellectual activities. These can include applying creative solutions to everyday problems, or solving creatively constructed puzzles that require out-of-the-box thinking. The former scenario may not be so plausible, as we do not encounter complex problems every day in our lives, but solving cleverly constructed puzzles is certainly possible.

Puzzles come in a wide variety of flavors, and almost anyone can spend hours with these. These can be of the simplest varieties, which require arranging a few numbers in a grid, or rearranging the letters of a word to form a new one. On the other hand, there can be complex mathematical puzzles, which require hours of brainstorming to solve.

Sudoku, designed by Nikoli (a Japanese puzzle company), is one of the best examples of mathematical puzzles that require substantial amount of brainstorming. A typical Sudoku consists of multiple magic squares with a few numbers removed from each square, such that the numbers in each diagonal, vertical and horizontal row add up to the same total.

Games like Sudoku require high concentration and the ability to think creatively, visualizing the solution before actually filling in the grid. Solving puzzles like these on a regular basis will usually slow down the aging process of the brain, and also keep a person’s neural network healthy till a ripe old age.

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Spatial intelligence refers to the ability of a person to visualize something that he cannot actually see at the moment. Every person is born with some amount of spatial intelligence, but some have it to a much greater degree. Successful fiction writers, for instance, will need to have high spatial intelligence, since they need to imagine how a particular situation would look, and put it into words. However, having high spatial intelligence can also be beneficial to a person’s brain.

When a person with high spatial intelligence sees a particular incident, he will often be able to visualize how the situation would take place under different circumstances. For instance, he may look at a sunny field and imagine how it would look in moonlight. These persons inadvertently do these comparisons most of the times. This not only satisfies their mind, the brain is also forced to call upon its neural network to generate the impulses needed to form the picture. With prolonged usage, the neural networks absorb more nutrition from blood, and consequently remain healthy, even when the person has grown old.

It is like working out. When a person pumps weight in a gym, his muscles absorb more protein and become stronger. Similarly, when he uses his spatial intelligence repeatedly, his brain becomes healthier. It’s all about keeping the brain active the right way.

Memory reserves of any person get degraded with age. There is simply no way you can cure this ailment, no matter what medications you use, or which neurologist you consult. However, you can inhibit the damage to your memory reserves that always occur with old age by undertaking good memory tests.

Memory tests are carried out by many neuroscientists in order to determine how well their patients’ memory reserves are functioning. The tests are generally of two types. One type tests the verbal memory of the player, in which the objective is to go through a list of words and type as many as possible in a form given on the next page. The number of words the player can remember determines his memory capacity.

Another type of test determines the player’s visual memory, in which the objective is to compare two or more kinds of images and spot the odd one out. The player has to remember which ones he had marked as odd ones, because in the form on the second page, he has to type out his choices.

These tests can give the right hemisphere of your brain (which houses your memory reserves) a good workout. Repeatedly taking these tests may help in actually improving your memory capacity. You can also find several high quality tests online that work based on similar principles. Some websites have interactive games that you can play in order to improve your memory.

Some people are gifted with good memory and reasoning skills which do not seem to deteriorate noticeably with age. However, that is not true for most individuals, who tend to lose both these abilities as they grow older. In order to prevent this, it is necessary to perform some amount of brain training exercises on a regular basis. These exercises are specially developed to keep the brain healthy and working efficiently all the way to a ripe old age.

Many organizations that carry out researches on human psychology design various brain training courses, or even video games to help in performing their researches. Some of the courses are specifically designed for improvement of particular brain functions. For instance, one course may simply be developed to help the user improve his/her memory, whereas another may be designed with improvement of logical reasoning skills in mind.

The courses often require significant amount of time and effort to prepare, and are consequently quite expensive. However, some websites, such as actibrain.com provide visitors with free brain training exercises. There are both regular tests and engaging games that help visitors to give their brains a good workout, possibly improving their brain power appreciably over time.

Brain reflection occurs when your brain registers a thought or impulse and tells you to act upon it. In other words, this is your “reflex”, i.e., how fast you can react to changes to your surroundings. The faster this reflex is the better. A very low reaction time shows that your brain is working well, and is in a healthy condition. However, as a person ages, his/her reaction time increases considerably, proving that the brain is gradually losing its efficiency. There is no way to cure this malady yet, but it can be slowed down by completing brain reflection tests at least thrice a week.

A brain reflection test typically requires you to click on a colored square or button as quickly as you can as it changes color. How fast you are able to click determines how quickly your brain reacts to the change of color in the box. If you have a score of at least 0.20 seconds, then you can rest assured that your brain is still quite healthy. You should take this test at least twice a week, to make sure that your brain stays healthy for a long time to come.

BrainMetrix.com is a popular developer of tests based on brain function. The brain reflection test, which they provide at their online website, is definitely worth a try.

Do you have a tendency to get stuck up when it comes to decision making? Training your brain to make logical decisions and to use tactics on the fly can help prevent this situation. Several methods exist to improve your decision making abilities, and playing Bingo is just one of those.

Yes, it is true. Playing Bingo involves constant decision making and straining the brain. Besides, anticipating which card would be up next makes the brain calculate all possibilities at whiplash speed. What better way to spark up your synapses?

A few rounds of Bingo played at least twice or thrice a week can activate many idle neural clusters in your brain, thereby “telling” those clusters to absorb more protein from your diet and become stronger as a result. These strong neural clusters resist the debilitating effects of aging, which is otherwise not preventable.

So, play a round or two of Bingo on Friday night. All that hanging out with friends might pay off after all.

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Memory training is a sure shot way of keeping your neural network healthy. When we are born, our brains have over 15,000 point-to-point connections between neurons. As we grow up, many of these connections, or synapses, as these are called, stay idle for long periods of time. That is because, under normal circumstances, we use only a small portion of power that our brains can provide. For PC-savvy people, a perfect analogy would be using a PC with a quad-core CPU only for running MS-Office.

Most people do not even use half the memory capacity that their brains can provide. With prolonged idling, many synapses dry up and get disconnected, eventually leading to ailments like Alzheimer’s disease at older age.

One way to alter the scenario is to exercise the brain using memory training tests. Many websites provide tests (like Lumosity.com, and Queendom.com) that help the participant memorize a lot of facts or numbers and recall those fast later on. This type of tests helps revive some of the broken neural connections. With prolonged practice, it can even help the brain combat memory loss.

Did you know that the right side of your brain works more than the left side? When you are absorbed in some kind of brain-intensive work, your left brain quickly “gets bored” and shuts off, leaving the right brain to deal with it. So, if you can make your right brain stronger with some exercises designed specifically for it, you should be able to do your day to day work much better. Here is one exercise designed to keep your right brain healthy.

Take a large piece of paper (A2 size will do) and a black pen. Sit comfortably in a chair and pick a subject to draw. It should neither be too simple nor too complex. Set a timer to ring after half an hour. That should give you enough time for the exercise. Now, start sketching the subject on paper. While drawing, try not to stop your pen too often. Simply look at the subject and observe it taking shape slowly. This act of moving your eyes with the movement of the pen is the aim of the drill. When the timer rings, stop drawing immediately, and see how much you were able to finish.

This is an exercise catered specifically towards giving your right brain a good workout. Try to do this at least twice every week. It should help keep your right brain healthy and performing at full efficiency all the way to a ripe old age.

Giving your brain a total workout requires no more than 35 minutes a day. Research has revealed that only that little amount of training can make your brain work more efficiently for those later years of life. Here’s an example of a simple brain training regime.

Vocabulary training (10 minutes) – Solve some word puzzles that test your vocabulary. Go for anagram puzzles for even better effect. If you can’t find any good puzzles at hand, try crossword puzzles. These are equally effective.

Math skill training (15 minutes) – Write down the monthly budget, and then calculate the total in your mind. That’s right, no calculators allowed. Otherwise, you can also try Sudoku for a very effective workout of your brain.

Memory training (10 minutes) – Remember any poem that you studied back in high school? Recite it aloud while standing in front of a mirror. Not only will this strain your memory reserves, but will also make those gray cells work harder and get stronger in the process.

Brain training on a regular basis slows down the deterioration of brain cells with age. It also makes the neurons in your brain stronger, preventing ailments like the Alzheimer’s disease. Train your brain today to keep it healthy for those later years of life.