Why brain training is not something you should miss out on

By Jasper12 November 2019

You want to lock your home while leaving, but you forgot where you've left your keys. decreasing memory cognitive decline

Does this ever occur to you?
You might wonder if this is something minor or the start of cognitive decline.
And if this is the start of cognitive decline, can something be done about this?
In this article, we discuss how age affects the brain and what you can do to support your brain and stall this process.

What happens to your brain as you get older?

Brain ageing is inevitable, but the way it affects the functioning of the brain differs per person.
While we get older, lots of changes occur in our brains.
According to studies, your brain will reach its peak performance between the age of 16 to 25.
After the age of 25, the functioning of your working memory will start to reduce.
Although this might sound alarming, your mental fitness doesn’t necessarily experience a sharp decline after you surpass the age of 25.
According to research, testing and stimulating your brain will keep your mental fitness strong, including your memory.
Want to know more about how ageing affects the brain? Read all about it in our blog the aging brain.

Can you really improve your memory?

How strong your memory is, depends on the health and vitality of your brain.
Fortunately, the health and vitality of your brain can be improved.
This is because the human brain has the ability to adapt to changes, even at old age.
Stimulating your brain in the right way forces your brain to make new connections between both new and existing brain cells.
The adaption of your brain by creating new connections between brain cells is what we call neuroplasticity.
Memory loss and other mental problems aren’t caused by a loss of brain cells, but by the lack of communication between these brain cells.
Neuroplasticity is what makes the improvement of your memory possible.

How to improve your memory?

As already mentioned, does the ability of your brain to create new connections between brain cells.
This is also known as Neuroplasticity.
Neuroplasticity makes it possible to adapt to changes.
So, Neuroplasticity causes your brain to improve itself already, you probably wonder if you can’t do anything to improve your memory yourself.
Luckily, there are lots of ways to stimulate your brain to become and stay healthy and fit. Here are our 4 tips:

Tip 1: Eat the right nutrients

According to lots of researches, what you eat can affect the health and vitality of your brain. Consuming fish, whole grains, green vegetables, nuts and even chocolate can have a positive effect on the health of your brain. Want to know what food you can’t miss when you want a healthy brain? Read all about it in our blog Healthy brain food.

Tip 2: Exercise, exercise and... exercise

Physical exercising improves the blood circulation within your brain. The brain contains out of many brain cells and orbits, connecting the brain cells and other areas of the brain with each other. All those connections are sensitive to the quality of the blood circulation.

This is just one of the many positive effects exercising has on the health and vitality of the brain.

Tip 3: Try to avoid stress

People aren’t aware of this yet, but stress is one of the brain’s worst enemies. Long-lasting stress destroys brain cells and damages the hippocampus. The hippocampus is the region of the brain that is involved with the formation of new memories and retrieving old ones.

Tip 4: A glass of wine a day keeps the doctor away

Although it sounds like a joke, this saying is partly true. One glass of wine daily can lower your blood pressure, which is linked with decreasing the stress level. But don’t forget, it is all about moderation. While a whine a day can have positive effects on the health and vitality of your brain, excessive use of alcohol can have a big negative impact on your brain.

Learn more useful tips and tricks to improve your memory.

What games exercise your brain?

So, stimulating your brain forces it to make new connections between both new and existing brain cells. But how do you stimulate your brain? Using games and doing activities that forces you to think in different ways help you to stimulate your brain, and thus exercise your brain.
A couple of ways to keep your brain and memory healthy and fit are:

Solve a crossword puzzle

Solving a crossword puzzle doesn’t only stimulate your vocabulary, but also your other cognitive functions and memory. Studies have shown a strong correlation between people who do crossword puzzle often and the delay in the development of dementia.

Solve a Sudoku

This number placement game forces you to think about more than just the single next step you are going to take and follow trails of consequences. Being available in different difficulties.

Play chess

Playing a game of chess asks for the brain to start thinking strategically, continuous pay attention and to remember what kind of actions your co-player made. All these cognitive abilities occur during daily life.

Put together a jigsaw puzzle

Whether you are putting together a jigsaw puzzle of 100 or 10,000 pieces, working on a jigsaw puzzle is a helpful way to improve your brain. A jigsaw puzzle forces you to look at different pieces and figure out where they would fit within the bigger picture. Therefore, a jigsaw puzzle is a great way to stimulate your visual perception.

Brain training with brain games

If you are looking for extra variety in exercises for the brain, brain training with brain games is an option. The variety in available brain games helps you to stimulate not a single, but multiple cognitive functions.

What is brain training?

Brain training is the use of a digital program, aimed to maintain or improve one’s cognitive abilities. Examples of cognitive abilities are the memory, concentration, visual perception, planning skills and logic.
Because the brain has the ability to adapt to changes, forcing these abilities to work could result in strengthening them.
Brain training programs could include brain games, tests and brain teasers.

What are brain games?

Brain games are games designed to focus on improving your cognitive functions. This includes your concentration, memory, visual perception, logic and planning skills.

Transforming science-based exercises into games, makes brain games suitable for different purposes. Like people who play games for fun or even people who are looking for a way to improve their cognitive performance.
With brain games, it is now possible to stimulate your cognitive functions.
Research has shown that just 10 minutes of brain training a day will already ensure cognitive stimulation.

You can also train your brain with brain games. All you have to do is start a brain game. The games are designed to ensure you will stimulate your cognitive functions to work, while you are playing a game.

Read more about how brain games and how BrainGymmer works.

Want to try out a brain game? Take a look at our brain game Pattern Matrix

There are various brain games all over the web.
We at BrainGymmer provide you with a total package where you can follow your improvements and you can compare yourself with others.
This makes training your brain fun, useful and challenging.
Take our brain game Pattern Matrix for example. Pattern Matrix helps you to train your pattern recognition skills in a fun way.
With this brain game, you have to find and connect the tiles with matching patterns.
Pattern Recognition and other pattern games are all about recognizing patterns as fast as possible.
To train your pattern recognition with our brain game Pattern Matrix.

Why brain training?

Brain training is a fun and easy way to challenge your brain daily.
If you lack in challenging your brain enough, you have the chance of deteriorating your cognitive age. Just reading or solving a Sudoku every single day won’t be enough.
According to research, the variation of activities to challenge our mental health is the key to a strong and fit brain.
BrainGymmer offers a variety in activities such as brain games, tests and brain teasers.
Because we keep track of your scores, your progress is measurable.
Only ten minutes of brain training could already show an increase in your scores.
The brain games as part of our brain training program will adapt to your level. This keeps training with serious games challenging, without being impossible.
In addition, brain training with brain games is less labour-intensive, more interactive and brain games are designed to trigger specific cognitive abilities.

Do brain games really work?

Because brain games still are a very new science, researchers are still discovering the specific effects. BrainGymmer is currently supporting multiple international universities during their researches regarding brain training and brain games.
By working together with universities within this area of expertise, we at BrainGymmer try to provide as impactful brain games as possible.

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