The same goes for your brain. 

It needs activities, mental workouts and new experiences — all that stretches its capabilities to keep it fit. These activities that enrich and nourish your brain are called mental stimulation. Let’s understand how these mental activities can benefit your mind and help you keep it sharp and healthy. 

So What Exactly is Mental Stimulation?

Mental stimulation can be described as the activities that help enrich your mind and improve the brainpower. It could be anything — reading a book, learning a language or a musical instrument, playing brain games or even socializing with people. All these provide the mental stimulation that not only boosts your brainpower but also helps fight the debilitating age-related cognitive diseases. Here’re some of the benefits of mental stimulation.

Positive Effects of Mental Stimulation

1. Mental Stimulation Improves Neuroplasticity

Neuroplasticity or brain plasticity is the ability of our brain to adapt to the changes and grow. When you are exposed to a new experience, your brain creates connections between neurons (the brain cells)  and changes its neuronal structure. So whenever you expose your brain to a new experience or a challenging activity, new connections between neurons are created.

Although this is a natural process that happens every day when you experience something new, you can purposefully work on rewiring your brain with conscious mental activities and simulations.

Consider your brain as a computer that upgrades its hardware along with the software updates. The hardware upgrades are the new neuronal connections that happen with upgrades in software — new experiences. Now that’s something really fascinating.

2. Improves Cognitive Reserve

The concept of cognitive reserve explains the ability of some individuals to stay mentally healthy despite age-related cognitive debilitation (loss in memory, verbal and reasoning ability) or social and personal distress (personal loss, stress, etc). The higher cognitive reserve the better resilience to these diseases and adversities. 

Cognitive reserve is influenced by genetics and aspects of life such as level education, cognitively demanding occupations and socially interactive lifestyle. But mental stimulation can help you boost the cognitive reserve. Learning new skills or even challenging your mind with simple activities such as reading, solving brain games and regular exercise can help. 

3. Improves Day-to-Day Cognitive Functioning

Apart from slowing down the effects of age-related brain diseases and improving brain plasticity, mental stimulation has some great effects on everyday cognitive functioning. Consider mental stimulation as your body workouts. Just like you can work on your strength, agility or endurance with different exercises, you can improve different cognitive functions with different mental activities. You can workout your mind to develop your attention, focus, memory, information processing, logical thinking, lateral thinking, problem-solving, etc. with different mental activities.

Mental Stimulation – Things You Can Do

1. Adopt Life-Long Learning

This is one of the keys to mental health and the best mental stimulation — learning. Education and learning often stop at school or colleges. But it doesn’t have to be so. Take courses and learn new skills — it doesn’t necessarily have to be related to your profession. It can be a hobby too. Learn baking, a musical instrument, a new language, history, etc. This learning is aimed to expose your brain to new experiences; all that stretches the limits and keeps it sharp and healthy. 

2. Brain Training

Brain training is what the name suggests — it trains your brain to perform better. These are the activities that engage your brain, make you think and challenge your cognition. There are a wide variety of cognitive training materials that targets specific cognitive functions to provide mental stimulation. You can try brain training that works on your attention (sustained and selective attention), comprehension, memory, processing speed, language skills, etc. Here you can try this memory brain game to get started.

Below is a list of some words that are irrelevant to each other. Take two minutes to study them and engage yourself in some other activities for the next 10 minutes. Then come back and check how many words you can remember.

1. Cat
2. Dessert
3. Piano
4. Tap
5. Book
6. Rain
7. Honey
8. Sad
9. Green
10. Write
11. Cradle
12. Scary
13. Eagle
14. Remarkable
15. Iron

4. Puzzles Games

What can be a better way to stimulate the mind with the games that are designed for it. Puzzles and brain games such as Sudoku, crosswords, word scrambles and brain teasers are a fun and effective way to challenge your mind. There are a number of puzzles that are designed to work on your different part of the brain such as mental math, riddles, brainteasers, reasoning games that work as a brain trainer but these are just way more fun. 

5. Physical Exercise

Regular physical workouts aid in improving cognitive function and reduces the risk of dementia. Moderate-intensity exercise for about 150 minutes a week can increase the blood flow to the hippocampus — the memory storage region of the brain. And combining it with some kind of brain games and other mental activities can expand its benefits.

6. Socialize 

Social interactions provide mental stimulation as it engages different cognitive resources. If you are neglecting socializing in your life, you are neglecting to work on a large part of the brain. A recent study found that even a small amount of social interaction such as 10 minutes can help in better cognitive functioning. Further, social interactions also have a great impact on cognitive ageing as it involves managing and understanding emotions that require complex brain functioning. 

Wrapping Up

Deliberately working on your mental health doesn’t take much time and efforts but can have life-changing effects on your mental health. A good lifestyle with some simple activities like being socially interactive and brain training can help you improve everyday cognitive functioning and even provide resilience against age-related mental diseases. Hope this brief article about mental stimulation has provided you with some information to get started with your mental health journey. 

Since you are here, if you enjoy challenging your brain with some brain games and puzzles, don’t forget to check out our PUZZLES section. We have some crazy archives of brain games that’ll keep you engaged all day long. 

The post Mental Stimulation — How Simple Mental Activities Can Improve Your Mental Health appeared first on SmartBrain.

That’s when selective attention comes in.

It’s our brain’s ability to attend one information, filter out other irrelevant ones and again shift the attention to a new stimulus. Without this, we won’t be able to focus on the tasks at the hand amid the numerous stimuli in the environment. It is an important cognitive phenomenon that makes our life easier. Let’s understand this in detail.

What Is Selective Attention?

Selective attention is the ability to focus on a certain thing in the environment while simultaneously ignoring the distractions and irrelevant information for a period of time. 

We do this every day. While scrolling the news feed on the smartphone in a crowded subway. While chatting with a friend in a bustling cafe or while at work —  ignoring the not so important chats of the colleagues and noises in the background.

Even you are doing it right now while you read this article focusing on each word as you read. 

Selective attention tunes out the distraction and helps us focus on what’s important. And this phenomenon is quite important in our everyday life.

Our attention is limited and so is our brain capacity to process the information at a given period of time. By filtering out the unnecessary details we are able to perform the task on the hand efficiently. Think of your brain as a computer.

A computer would get sluggish or even get stuck while handling numerous applications and windows all open and running at the same time. So will your brain. Thus you need to close the unnecessary apps that are not in use. Selective attention does that. It closes (or at least minimizes) the unnecessary stimuli around you so you can work on one task with the best efficiency. 

Popular Theories to Understand Selective Attention

There are a number of theories and models presented by psychologists to help us understand this phenomenon. Among them two being the most promising and widely accepted — Broadbent’s Filter Model and Treisman’s Attenuation Theory. 

Both these theories focus on our limited capacity to pay attention and thus are considered “bottleneck” models.

The narrow bottleneck represents the limitation of our capacity to attend and process different stimuli happening in the environment at a time. For example, our eyes have the ability to receive 10,000,000 bits of information per second but the brain can only possess 40 bits per second. 

Let’s understand these two selective attention theories.

Broadbent’s Filter Model

Donald Broadbent was the first to present a theory about selective attention and used ‘filter’ as an analogy to explain the phenomenon.

He explains that we have a limited capacity for processing the information. And thus this filter is designed to prevent the overloading by selecting the relevant information to process early on. 

Here’s how it works:

The information or sensor input from the environment at a given point (words, music, noise, colours, shapes, etc.) enters our sensory register – a buffer that stores the information. 

This information is then transferred to the selective filter that attends the information based on physical characteristics such as colour, direction, loudness, pitch, etc.

Now the filter allows a certain input to pass through for the perceptual process and the rest of the inputs are rejected. 

The inputs that do not pass through the filter remain in the sensory buffer for a short period and will decay if not attended or processed by the filter.

He also suggests that the filter does not understand the meaning of the selected input, instead, the message is understood after it passes through the filter — during the perceptual process. Thus, the meaning of the message that’s not selected is not understood.

But there was a problem with this approach. 

The issue was if the information is filtered out before processing its meaning, we would not be able to recognize our own name called across the room while paying attention to a conversation. But we do attend our name with our unattended ears.

This led to new theories to answer this question. Treisman’s Attenuation theory is one of them.

Treisman’s Attenuation Theory

The basic approach of Treisman’s theory is quite similar but it addresses the fact that the unattended messages are not eliminated — they weaken.  

She suggests that instead of a filter, attention uses some kind of attenuator. Attenuation means to weaken or diminish. So rather than eliminating, our brain diminishes the unattended message. Her theory also explains that the input is not only identified only based on the physical property but also it’s meaning.

This attenuator works as a volume knob. It doesn’t eliminate the other inputs but turns their volume down. For example, if you are on a street hearing a dog bark, loud music from a car passing by and at the same time talking with a friend, you can attenuate the other sounds to focus on the conversation. But you can still process the meaning of these unattended sounds and switch your attention to them when you want to.

This was even demonstrated in her experiments where the participants were able to clearly identify the unattended messages. Thus this shows we are able to process the meaning of messages — even the unattended one.

These two theories have been pivotal to understand selective attention. 

It’s fascinating how this phenomenon works and indeed holds importance in cognitive functioning. If couldn’t filter out unnecessary stimuli in the environment, it would be nearly impossible to carry our day to day activities. At the same time, refocusing on the same unattended stimuli helps us understand what’s happening in our environment. 

Some Fun Selective Attention Tests

So now you know what selective attention is and how it works. You may have also realised how your brain works when you pay attention to sensory stimuli in the environment. But here’re some fun tests that you can do right now to better understand it. Check these out.

1. Can You Guess the Right Cup?

So you guessed the correct cup. But your brain might have missed the changes happening at the same time — the duck, the fifth hand and the colour of the cups. Fascinating, isn’t it?

Here’s another one.

2. Test Your Awareness: Whodunnit.

 Can you find who is the murderer?

So, were you able to spot the changes while finding out the murderer?

3. How Many Times the Players Wearing White Passed the Ball?

This is the famous awareness test known as The Invisible Gorilla by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris. This experiment was performed at Harvard University and it was found that half of the people who counted the passes missed the gorilla — as if it was invisible.

The post What Is Selective Attention — How It Works, Theories and Some Fun Tests appeared first on SmartBrain.

Well, most people don’t.

In fact, with the busy schedule and the kind of sleep-deprived lifestyle we live, it makes it impossible.

But the thing is — working on your brain’s health is extremely crucial to improve cognitive function and slowing down the risks of ageing on your brain. Our brains work a lot like muscles. You need to strengthen it, challenge it and stretch its capabilities. You have to use it or you’ll lose it. As simple as that.

That’s when mental stimulation and brain games come in. They are a fun and easy way to challenge and exercise your brain. The best part —  you don’t have to spare deliberate time for these games. You can play them on the go —  on a commute, on a lunch break or on weekends with friends and family and the rewards are wonderful.

So What Are Brain Games?

Brain games are the activities intended to sharpen thinking skills and improve cognitive abilities by stimulating your brain. Consider these games as mental workouts that help you enhance mental performance — such as processing, reaction time, quick decision making, focus, attention and memory. 

If you have ever played chess or tried to solve crosswords, word scrabble, Sudoku, Rubix Cube or any riddles and brainteasers you know how it feels. It’s challenging. It’s stimulating. It makes you scratch your head.

Now, these brain games can further be divided into two types. One that triggers your logical thinking and the other one tapping the lateral one. 

The logic-based games encourage an analytical approach to solve the problem — the kind of we use while solving a math problem. While for the lateral thinking approach you need to utilize creativity and out of the box thinking.

A dose of both lateral and logical thinking games can help you to be analytical and creative at the same time.

How Brain Games Impact Cognitive Functioning?

For this, let’s quickly understand how our brain works.

Our brain is like a computer. But just a lot better. 

When a computer receives periodic software updates, the specifications and hardware it came with remain the same. But our brain has the ability to even update its hardware along with the software.

When you learn or experience something new, your brain creates new connections between neurons (neurons are the brain cells that form our brain) and changes its neuronal structure. 

So when you expose your brain to new experience, environment, work or challenges, you are rewiring your brain with new neuron connections. 

This phenomenon is known as neuroplasticity. The term coined by Polish neuroscientist Jerzy Konorski to describe changes in neurons in our brain with new experiences. 

It means your brain has the ability to change. It can adapt to new situations. And even get better — but the question is how would you do it?

(You guessed it)Brain games. 

Brain games stimulate our mind, challenge our thinking and encourage us to come up with novel ways to solve problems. They are an opportunity to train the mind, sharpen and rewire it with some quick and fun activities.

Another way brain games enhance your mind is by helping to build cognitive reserve.

To put it simply, cognitive reserve is the brain’s ability to maintain the cognition function and even improvise to solve problems. It also provides resilience against risks of developing age-related cognitive weakness such as memory loss and debilitating verbal and reasoning ability. 

Research shows that moderate-intensity physical exercise that increases blood flow to the hippocampus (memory storage region in the brain) can help you build the cognitive reserve. But combining it with some kind of brain games and activities that stimulate the brain can further expand the benefits.

Some Brain Games You Can Start With

1. Stroop Colour Effect

Stroop colour effect occurs when you recognize the colour of the word rather than it’s semantic meaning. For example, the word “yellow”  is printed in orange, and you must recognize and say the colour of the text rather than the word. 

Here, try it yourself. Say the colour of the words — not the semantic meaning — in the following graphic.

Could you do it without any mistakes? No, right? The reason being the meaning of the words conflicts with your brain to recognize the colour and thus challenges your brain.

This works on two things — your selective attention skills and speed of processing. 

Selective attention skills: Your brain requires more attention to name the colour of the text than simply reading the word. 

Speed of processing: How fast is your brain’s processing speed to register the colour information of the word with a different meaning.

2. Jigsaw Puzzles

Jigsaw puzzles are fun and at the same time an excellent brain game to train your mind. There are a number of skills you work on while solving the jigsaw puzzle — such as problem-solving skills, logical thought process and reasoning abilities.

Fun fact: Bill Gates likes to tinker away puzzles and usually carries one while on vacation and holidays. 

While solving a jigsaw puzzle, you are stimulating your brain to memorize the shapes and colours of the pieces so that you can fit it together to form a bigger picture.

When you do this repeatedly, searching each piece, you are working on your short-term memory. It is also a perfect game to stimulate both the left and right brain tapping the logic and creative part at the same time. 

Research suggests that such brain games enhance spatial skills and memory retention and also can reduce the likelihood of developing Dementia and Alzheimer. 

Want to give it a try?

3. Lateral Thinking Puzzles

Lateral thinking is creative problem solving —  to come up with ideas and solutions that challenge the preconceived concepts. 

It is the answer to the question: 

“Why do some people always have new ideas while others of equal intelligence never do?”

Thus training your lateral thinking is equally vital as your logical thinking. And you can practice it with quick and fun lateral thinking puzzles. 

Lateral thinking puzzles include riddles and unusual scenarios with some information from which you find an answer. You need a novel way of thinking and looking at the situations from a different angle to solve it. Here, check if you can solve these lateral thinking puzzles.

1. The 19th and 22nd presidents of a country had the same mother and father but were not brothers or sisters. How can this happen? 

2.  How could a baby fall out of a twenty-story building onto the ground and live?

3. Three switches outside a windowless room are connected to three light bulbs inside the room. How can you determine which switch is connected to which bulb if you are only allowed to enter the room once?

(Answers at the end of the article.)

4. Word Games

Word games such as word scramble and crosswords are timeless games that have been played for decades and have wonderful benefits. 

A crossword puzzle is a great game to start with that’ll help you improve your critical thinking skills by interpreting the clues and finding answers to complete the puzzle.

It’s also a fun way to learn new facts and enhance your vocabulary. Scrabble is another great word game that stimulates your mind while unscrambling the letters to form words from a standard dictionary or lexicon. 

Here’s some exercise to get started.

Rearrange the letters to find the name of the colours. 

1. WLLOEY
2. ILTOVE
3. WTIEH
4. BWRNO
5. GENER
6. IPNK
7. LVDERAEN
8. TSQRUOUEI
9. SOCRIMN

If you were able to easily unscramble the above letters, here’s some advanced level of exercise.

Try to find out as many words you can from the following letters:

10. EATNRPH

Bonus if you can find a seven-letter word from this word scramble. Hint: It is also a Marvel superhero. 

Answers 

Lateral Thinking Puzzles

1. The same president was serving another term in office.
2. The baby fell out of a ground floor window.
3. Switch on the first switch, leave it for a few minutes, and then switch it off. Now switch on the second one and enter the room. The second switch will be connected to the bulb that is turned on, the first switch will be connected to the warm bulb, and the third switch will be connected with the cold bulb.

Word Games

1. YELLOW
2. VIOLET
3. WHITE
4. BROWN
5. GREEN
6. PINK
7. LAVENDER
8. TURQUOISE
9. CRIMSON
10.  The seven-letter word is PANTHER

The post Brain Games: Mental Workouts for a Sharp and Healthy Mind appeared first on SmartBrain.