Do mental gymnastics with brain games
Just as your muscles need strength training to grow, your brain needs mental workouts to stay in shape. Mental challenges force your brain to solve problems and they increase your learning. In the process, your brain builds and strengthens neural networks.
Numerous studies show that the greatest benefits accrue when you acquire a new skill, learn to speak another language, increase your years of education, or master a musical instrument. That’s because your brain forms broad new networks to accomplish these tasks, and the repetition that’s required to master your new skill reinforces those connections. Clearly, these are long-term commitments, not something you can try once and declare victory. A single Duolingo lesson in Portuguese won’t get you very far.
That said, there are many small brain-boosting challenges that you can build into your day and have fun with, too, while improving your brain power. Puzzles and brain games are one obvious approach to incorporating mental gymnastics into your daily routine. The Einstein Aging Study tracked 469 adults ages 75 to 85 for roughly five years each. Published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2003, the landmark study found that every cognitively challenging activity that participants performed one day a week— such as playing board games or reading—was associated with a 7% reduction in the risk of dementia over the following five years. The more days people engaged in these activities, the greater the cumulative effect.
But anything that deviates a little from your normal routine makes your brain devise a work-around, and that’s a plus. Take a different route home. Perform tasks with your nondominant hand. The more regions of your brain you can draw into these challenges, the better, making your brain work a little harder than usual to solve problems.