Everyone is familiar with the slowing of brain function and cognitive ability that comes with aging. Diseases like Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia are common in our rapidly-aging society, and many would like to find ways to off-set the common mental decline. Fortunately, there are some simple and even entertaining games for exercising the brain that can help to keep the brain active and in good health.
Function
The point of brain exercise games is to increase your cognitive fitness, which is your ability to remember, process, learn, adapt to new situations and plan for the future. By forcing your brain’s neurons to connect in new ways, you can keep those brain cells healthy. Scientists theorize that, by increasing the number of neurons actively used over time, an aging person can offset the neural losses associated with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.
Types
There are many types of brain exercise games available, depending on your interests and resources. For those who prefer mathematical thinking, Sudoku is an excellent brain exercise. If you are more inclined to word games, crossword puzzles are the classic brain exercise. These puzzles have the added benefit of being available both on-line and in daily newspapers. Other popular mind exercise games include board games like Go or Connect Four, strategy games like chess and checkers, and brain exercise video games like Brain Age 2 for the Nintendo DS.
Features
A good brain exercise brain needs to challenge you to think harder and in new ways. If your brain exercise seems easy, increase the difficulty or find new games to play. Because your brain loses neurons throughout the organ, the best mind exercise games use different parts of the brain at different times. Look for games that challenge your long-term and short-term memory, your strategizing skills and your reasoning.
Misconceptions
Until recent decades, most people thought that a person’s brain function was determined by childhood environment and by basic genetics. Education could help with brain function, but a person’s long-term neural ability remained fixed. Now, scientists think that the brain actually remains in a state of change throughout life. Brain exercise games can and should begin as early as possible, even during a young person’s school years when problem-solving and planning activities are helpful. Healthy adults with no apparent cognitive loss can benefit from mind exercises as well, building up active neurons for later years. Even when the neural losses of aging and dementia begin, brain exercise games can slow neural degeneration and lessen symptoms.
Benefits
While playing brain exercise games is unlikely to raise your IQ, you can increase your mental flexibility and speed with them. Just as regular exercise increases muscle strength and your physical condition, brain exercises can make your thinking faster and more capable of dealing with new situations. We all lose neurons with age, with brains actually shrinking over time as neurons die. By using the highest number of neurons possible, brain exercise games help you to retain working neurons even as age kills others.
