Visual brain exercises help stimulate and activate neurons and nerve pathways in the brain. The brain needs to be exercised like any other part of your body in order to enhance function and maintain optimal speed, reasoning and processing capabilities. Using your vision to stimulate the brain may help keep your brain active, healthy and vigorous, according to Neurobics.com, a website dedicated to brain exercises that stimulate multi-sensory reactions. Use your vision and other senses to exercise the brain and increase benefits.
Visual Conversations
Find other ways to communicate without speaking, suggests Neurobics.com. For example, eat dinner with your family without talking, but interact with each other visually. Watch visual cues to determine how someone at the table is feeling and then try to convey a response using gestures and expressions. This exercise can be practiced any time, and may last from several minutes to larger chunks of time.
Origami
Origami, or the art of paper folding, is often utilized by health care providers as a visual brain exercise that also increases spatial awareness, according to Brain Fitness for Seniors. Following instructions and folding the paper to create a figure engages a connection between visual and spatial or touch, challenging the brain to increase cognitive skills and understanding. Origami encourages brain stimulation and offers new challenges with each new pattern, strengthening and growing new neural pathways for optimal brain health.
Online Brain Games
Dozens of websites offer brain teasers, games and activities for visual brain stimulation. Content found on sites like NOVA online offers visual mind games that help the brain process the images it sees and assimilate that information into a solution for a puzzle or brain teaser. Optical illusions and graphics challenge the mind to make sense of blind spots, three-dimensional, or 3-D depth perception, and other visual anomalies that initially generate confusion and then force the brain to concentrate and focus to resolve.
Vision Therapy
Vision therapy is often used by optometrists to improve not only vision, but also the brain, according to Vision3d.com. Such exercises are overseen by a licensed optometrist and incorporate 3-D pictures to increase depth perception and cognition capabilities. The 3-D visual images challenge the brain to translate images usually seen in a two-dimensional, or 2-D plane, by adding depth and dimensionality, which literally forces the brain to process additional aspects that picture. This process creates and stimulates optimal function and growth of neural cells and neural pathways in the brain.
