We often hear the importance of exercising to preserve our health, which is why many of us hit the gym on a regular basis to train different muscles including the quadriceps, glutes, biceps, abs, etc. Sometimes we take a day off from the gym and go for a walk or jog instead, whatever workout you choose, you do it because you know it will make you feel better physically.
However, have you ever thought that your brain might also need a good training to optimize its functioning? In the same way that we train different muscles of our body, we should also cognitively stimulate our brain if we want to improve our overall health. Exercising help you prevent chronic diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases, and diabetes. However, science suggests that brain-training exercises may be just as beneficial for our brain health!
The Brain and its Neuroplasticity
Although the brain is not necessarily considered a muscle, it acts like one in the sense that it has the ability to be trained, to improve its functioning, and preserve itself.
The brain is a complex organ that contains billions of neuronal cells connected to each other creating patterns that allow the brain to function and coordinate processes such as thoughts, movements, emotions and language. [1]
Over the years, researchers have studied the brain in great depth and have discovered that the brain has the ability to change and adapt its neural connections and functioning in response to new information. This adaptation process is known as neuroplasticity or brain plasticity. [2]
10 Ways to Exercise Your Brain
If you think you have left your brain in the back seat when it comes to training, don't worry! It is never too late to introduce new challenges into your daily life and improve your cognitive function. In this blog, we´ll share with you 10 fun ways that you and your family can challenge yourselves and get a great brain workout!
1. Stroop Effect Test
Have you ever heard of this brain teaser? The Stroop Effect Test is a challenging game that will make you think, make you laugh and may even cause you some frustration. But if you play it with your family, I can guarantee that you will all have fun! This game can be played in two ways. First, try to recite each word in order, as they are written (aka, black = black, yellow = yellow). Do this as quickly as possible. Next, try to recite the color of each word as fast as possible. This is where it gets tricky! The latter challenges your brain by making it process two conflicting pieces of information.
Play with your family, time yourselves and see who can say all the words and colors the fastest. Do not get discouraged if you misread a word or two. Take your time, say the correct word, or color, and move on to the next. Believe me, this game is challenging even for adults!
2. Memory Card Game
The memory card game is one of the most popular games of all times. To play this game, shuffle the cards and place them on the table, face down, in rows. The objective is to collect as many pair of cards as possible. Players can turn two cards per turn, if the cards do not match, cards must be hidden again. Then, Player N ° 2 take his turn, if the cards match, the player keeps them. The person with the most cards at the end wins.
To get a free printable memory game, click here!
3. T Puzzle
Puzzles are a great way to train your brain and improve your spatial thinking skills. This T puzzle is much trickier than it looks and it might take you quite a long time to solve it!
Play it with your family and see who can find the answer first! Here is the T puzzle Template (if you want to play it first, give it to someone else to cut so you do not see the solution). When you are solving the puzzle, use the second page as a reference and complete the puzzle on top of the colorful T.
Time yourself and let us know how fast you completed!
4. The Empty Triangle
This brain teaser is ideal to test your pattern recognition and math skills. Let´s see if you can find the answer to the empty triangle!
Once you find the solution, check your answer here!
5. Caesar Box – Cryptography
Do you have code-breaking skills? Gather with your friends or family and try to crack the secret message in the following cryptography
Try to work on finding the answer for at least 10 min, is okay if you can’t find it! This brain teaser is very tricky and only those with the brain for cybersecurity can easily crack it.
Click here to find the answer!
Want to Know a Fun Fact?
Why “The Caesar Box”? During Roman times, Julius Caesar used coded messages to communicate with his soldiers in the field so if one of his messages was filtered, his opponent was not able to read the secret message in them. [3]
6. Picture Puzzler
Are you looking for fun brainteasers for your kids? We got you! Use the following picture puzzler and help them find the “happy word”
Answer: SMILE
7. Spot the Difference
This is another super fun brain teaser that the kids will love!
Click here for the asnwer key
8. The Big Maze
Another very popular brain game to test your problem-solving skills, play with your family and have fun finding the escape to this tricky maze!
9. Scrabble
Scrabble is a great game that will expand your vocabulary and your intellect. This board game requires players to make fast decision and combines different letters to find a word. Playing this game is another way to stimulate brain´s plasticity.
If you don´t have this board game, you can always download this game for free on your smartphone or computer to play it anytime and anywhere.
10. Sudoku
Finally, we leave you this popular game which is probably one of the most difficult that we are sharing with you on this blog. Sudoku is a number-placement puzzle where each row, column, and square (9 spaces each) must be completed with the numbers from 1 to 9 without repeating any number within the row, column or square. Sounds complicated, right? Play this Sudoku game below if you really want to challenge yourself!
Now you have everything you need to start creating the habit of training your brain! Set at least 10-15 minutes every day where you can exercise your brain and stimulate different cognitive functions to develop a healthier brain and lower your risk of dementia.
Hope you found some of these games enjoyable. Don´t forget to share your thoughts with us, we will love to hear how you and your family have fun playing these games!
References
How your brain works. Mayo Clinic. https://www.mayoclinic.org/brain/sls-20077047
Puderbaugh M, Emmady PD. Neuroplasticity. StatPearls. 2020 www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK557811/
Khan Academy. The Caesar Cipher. 2021. https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/computer-science/cryptography/crypt/v/caesar-cipher