Cognitive stimulation exercises

brain capacity

There are certain pathologies, advancing age and some lifestyle habits that are not at all adequate for our health and that can impair cognitive functioning. When this happens, we lose our responsiveness, memory, and other reasoning abilities that we normally had. However, there are techniques and cognitive stimulation exercises that help us to prevent the deterioration of our mind and, in addition, improve the functioning of our mental capacities.

In this article we are going to talk to you about some of the best cognitive stimulation exercises.

What is cognitive stimulation?

High performance in cognitive stimulation exercises

The first thing we have to know is what we mean by cognitive stimulation. It is nothing more than a selection of a set of techniques and strategies that serve to improve the effectiveness of our cognitive abilities and executive functions such as memory, language, attention, reasoning or planning.

This area is extended especially in therapeutic interventions for diseases that usually cause cognitive impairment. Alzheimer's is one of the best-known diseases of cognitive impairment. Normally, with advancing age and aging we need a training of the mind in order to achieve and maintain the same responsiveness.

To do this, we carry out various activities that stimulate brain capacities. We are going to see below some of the techniques and exercises of cognitive stimulation.

Cognitive stimulation techniques and exercises

Improve capacity with cognitive stimulation exercises

There is a wide range of activities to stimulate our brain that include activities from exercise books to other more dynamic forms such as brain games. These techniques and activities are developed to be carried out for both adults and children.

Cognitive stimulation exercise books, as we have mentioned before, are very useful to be able to work on these executive functions and memory, attention, reasoning, problem solving and attention capacities. These exercise books are very easy to access since you can buy them both in bookstores and download directly from the internet. Depending on the person in which you are going to use it and the degree of cognitive impairment they have, there are different levels of difficulty so that it can be solved by almost anyone who can strengthen their mental capacities.

Another type of cognitive stimulation exercises are called brain entertainment games. It is summarized in various mobile applications that are also available for computers and tablets and have the advantage that they can be used anytime, anywhere. Also, having numerous sights and sounds can help improve cognitive memory. They offer the possibility of being able to regulate the levels of difficulty adjusting to the level of each person. We cannot set the same level of difficulty if we are practicing with children or with adults.

Neurotechnology

One of the techniques that serves to stimulate our mind and that also works with types of exercises to improve our abilities is neurotechnology. These technologies are based on the principles of advanced equipment that are capable of recording our brain activity in such a way that it can be individually adapted. Some interventions and surveillance are needed to be able to monitor the progress of each individual in these tests.

It is important that we point out that cognitive stimulation can be effective as long as it is adapted to the cognitive and potential level of each person. It is possible that we are involving people with less mental capacity to exercises that are above their level and we believe that negative results mean that the person is not progressing. We need to adapt these exercises to the cognitive capacity of the person and after that, and gradually evaluating its evolution.

It is interesting to do some activities that promote motivation and interest and that pose a challenge. This is how we improve the perception of self-efficacy and mood to increase, in turn, the chances of success in interventions.

The best cognitive stimulation exercises

Cognitive stimulation exercises

There is a wide variety of materials and activities as well as cognitive stimulation exercises that allow us to work on the different capacities depending on each person. The same exercise can be used to train more than one cognitive capacity. The same ability can also be worked out for different exercises.

Let's see the most popular exercises:

  • Exercises for attention: They are those who try to improve attention and rely on different activities to increase it. We have sustained attention, visual attention, selective hearing, etc.
  • Exercises for perception: They are those that try to improve people's perception, both visual and victim, and tactile. It can be done through exercises in a dynamic and entertaining way.
  • Exercises for understanding: It tries to improve basic cognitive abilities and they are related to other abilities to develop them and increase performance.
  • Memory exercises: memory is one of the cognitive abilities that first begin to deteriorate as we advance in our age. It is important to work this area of ​​our brain to counteract this decline and keep the mind continuously active. To do this, we can do exercises of many types such as viewing images, answering questions, memorizing word lists, etc.
  • Exercises for language: one of the fundamental cognitive capacities that people have to communicate with each other is language. Developing this language from an early age is essential. We can do exercises, write synonyms and antonyms, series of words, generate new words with a combination of initials and show sequences of words, among others.
  • Exercises for processing speed: the processing speed or is a mental process that establishes the relationship between cognitive execution and the time invested in it. It is like the time it takes us to respond to a stimulus. With these exercises you will exercise to improve the information and be able to process it more quickly without losing efficiency and improving performance.
  • Exercises for orientation: both children and the elderly can present problems and difficulties in orientation. You can do some activities such as reading texts and later you will answer questions, place a person in an unknown place and provide them with a map to find another place, etc.

As you can see, there are numerous types of cognitive stimulation exercises. I hope that with this information you can learn more about this topic.


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