The games to exercise the mind They will help you develop your response and adaptation capacities to the environment of the new demands of the modern era. Now more than ever, it is necessary to have a prepared mind to give quick and assertive answers.
Our brain
Wake up as early as possible, prepare your bathroom, prepare your children's breakfast, dress them for school, take public transport, go to work, read your daily correspondence, solve the details of your daily work, in short, before noon , you are already physically and emotionally exhausted as without the ability to assimilate and process information.
Like a muscle for it to become stronger, your brain must be continuously stimulated to develop the neural connections that allow it to increase its ability to process data and emit responses.
The plasticity of our brain
We can assure you that our brain is so flexible and dynamic that it spends our entire lives forming and developing, and during all this time, all mental and cognitive abilities and capacities can be weakened or strengthened depending on the use and training we give them.
From there is born the conception of cerebral plasticity, which is nothing more than the capacity that our brain has together with the entire system that it commands (nervous system) to modify, adapt and strengthen its structure and its functioning during our existence and that is determined by according to the stimuli received from the environment.
This ability is extremely complex. From modifications in the molecular structure to changes in genetic expression and functioning, our brain looks for a way to develop the necessary mechanisms to facilitate its development, even if this implies discarding some neuronal synapses such as memories or events that are not important to make way to new connections.
synaptic plasticity and neurogenesis
Our brain rests on a particular foundation that allows it an amazing malleability in the face of new circumstances. For example: generally, when a person sees the functioning of one of their senses limited, they can appreciate how the others are sharpened, thus, a person who loses his sight, develops greater attention to the sense of hearing or touch to be able to orient himself in time. and space.
This happens because the synapses (connections between brain neurons) that made the use of sight possible are interrupted and the brain must develop new connections that allow it to respond to environmental stimuli. By virtue of this, the obligatory use of hearing or touch will be strengthened more and more to measures that are exercised frequently.
This ability to establish new connections and refine them with frequent use is what we call synaptic plasticity and is responsible for the acquisition and consolidation of new skills, such as playing a new musical instrument.
On the other hand, and in a controversial way, the term neurogenesis is coined to the ability of brain cells to create and proliferate and even move to the areas that are required. Thus, it has been shown that this action usually occurs after sudden neuronal death in some areas of the brain, hence the importance of therapies that allow these brain cells to regenerate.
induce plasticity
We have had references that brain plasticity is infinitely active during childhood; However this is not entirely true. There is the possibility of maintaining this plasticity active even in old age, what we can assure you is that the models or patterns of neuronal plasticity are different throughout our lives.
As we suppose, during childhood, it tends to have greater malleability. This is due to the fact that the more children, the greater the need to establish the neural connections that set the patterns of development in the face of certain stimuli; for example, when a child learns to ride a bicycle. Otherwise, an adult will show a greater rigidity in learning to drive this means of transport, since he has other neural connection patterns established and for much longer, which makes it more difficult to assimilate.
However, we know that mental and intellectual activity is a powerful trigger for brain plasticity. Regardless of age, provoking these mental stimuli promotes the brain's need to develop the malleability to adapt to new circumstances, however difficult or slow they may be. Although, this plasticity also connotes in changes and deteriorations of functioning and cognitive abilities.
Games to exercise the mind
Mental and cognitive training is the ideal stimulus for our brain changes to be positive. The systematic practice of some activities will allow the development of new neuron circuits and the strengthening of the respective synapses. One of the best ways to induce plasticity is through games to exercise the mind.
If you want to keep your brain in top condition, we invite you to read our article on mental training and enhance your cognitive abilities.
12 Games to exercise the mind and activate it
How can we exercise our mind without it being tedious or boring? Well, here are 12 entertaining and effective ways to exercise your mind.
The magnificent Chess
It is currently considered as a sport and one of the best games to exercise the mind. This is due to the fact that chess requires a lot of concentration, analysis capacity, response capacity, calculation and strategy from the individual.
Given the complexity of the game, it is not possible for us to develop the details of it in this article. To give you an idea of the level of complexity and demand of it, due to the characteristics of the board, more than 300 thousand possible movements can be registered, of course, each one depends on the strategy that you want to follow.
Chess is world famous and you can easily get a board of it. If you don't have it, you can do it in a rudimentary way, for which you will only need a ruler, marker and a little imagination. The game consists of a board of 64 squares arranged in 8 rows and columns, alternating black and white.
The pieces for each player (which are necessarily 2) are made up of 8 pawns, 2 rooks, 2 bishops, 2 knights, a queen and the key piece, a king. Each piece has a particularity of movement that you must combine to create the strategies that lead to the final objective: defeat the opponent's king.
Among the benefits of chess as a game to exercise the mind we have that it prevents Alzheimer's, increases your IQ, exercises both hemispheres of the brain, enhances creativity and memory, facilitates the development of synaptic plasticity, improves concentration and planning and Helps improve conflict resolution.
Memory, another of the games to exercise the mind
Memory games are universally known and generally practiced by children due to their simplicity and way of playing them. However, many underestimate the great benefits they can bring us, as their name indicates, memory games serve to stimulate and strengthen the prefrontal cortex, responsible for storing short-term memory.
These games induce the mental activity of recording information and storing and classifying it, which leads to the improvement of learning processes.
This consists of the arrangement of a number of pairs of cards or chips that are spread out and shuffled on a flat surface face down, so that the players will turn over 2 cards at a time per turn, if the figures match, they can pick them up and continue with the turn, otherwise, they must leave them in their place to give up the turn. The idea of the game is to memorize the position of the patterns of figures that are the same to reveal them when the turn corresponds.
Mathematical reasoning as games to exercise the mind
Mathematical reasoning games are excellent for inducing brain plasticity. These games allow to develop the skill of logical relations including simple mathematical operations.
Among the mathematical reasoning games we can include sudoku, which consists of a board of 81 boxes distributed in 9 rows and 9 columns, where some numbers from 1 to 9 are randomly placed. The idea is to finish filling each row and each column with the remaining numbers from 1 to 9 in such a way that they are not repeated throughout the same row and same column or subgrid of 3 by 3.
Puzzles or puzzles to activate your mind
Puzzles or jigsaw puzzles are par excellence the games that encourage the mind to develop the ability to solve problems and search for strategies to achieve defined objectives.
Likewise, we can assure you that they train and improve the acuity of visual memory by forcing the individual to retain the initial image in order to put it together. On the other hand, it develops concentration by abstracting a known image as a result of its fragmentation and additionally stimulates psychomotor development by allowing eye-sense of orientation-hands coordination through spatial perception.
These games to exercise the mind are cheap, easy to perform and put into practice. You can get some simple ones with a small number of pieces and others for extreme levels that can contain up to ten thousand pieces.
Crossword puzzles to exercise verbal reasoning
Crossword puzzles are written pastimes that consist of the arrangement of intertwined words horizontally and vertically, which enclose the meaning of propositions previously established and identified in the respective template.
To solve them, the development and training of verbal skills of the individual is required. Crossword puzzles stimulate the brain through constant reading, the exercise of memory through knowledge of new concepts and the relationship of images with words, as well as reasoning to trace paths and achieve correct solutions.
Another of the benefits of doing crossword puzzles is the prevention of cognitive deterioration, since it activates and strengthens the neural connections that prevent the onset of diseases such as Alzheimer's and senile dementia. Currently, there are applications that allow you to access endless crossword puzzles from your mobile phone.
The differences in images
It basically consists of getting the differences in the same image by presenting it twice, altering or hiding some minimal elements in it. This type of game allows to reinforce concentration and stimulates the visual cortex of the brain.
Exercise the mind with the creation of tales or stories
It is a strategy game that can be written, narrated or imaginary and that consists of creating a narrative with the proper correlation and syntax from previously established words.
The great thing about this game is that you can do it while driving to work or on the way home. The possibility of creating a story from a few previously established words allows creativity and imagination to be stimulated, reinforcing memory and the ability to learn and respond.
This game is usually applied to children or young people with learning difficulties so that they develop the ability to memorize key concepts from the creation of a story from the words that define a concept. For example, in these times of pandemic, children have been taught the concept of hand hygiene through stories that indicate a narration of how hands should be washed.
Stop, a game that exercises response speed
Among the most popular games of our childhood, you will surely remember the fabulous «Stop». The adrenaline of searching for words and being the first to finish had to have a plus: that your words did not coincide with those of your opponents.
The game with a minimum of two participants, consists of taking a sheet horizontally and dividing it into several columns with elements that denote: letter, name, surname, city or country, animal, thing, color and fruit and some other element.
Then one of the participants or a third party mentions a letter which will be the initial for the search for the words that will meet the condition of each column. The first to reach the end will say the word "Stop" and each element will be checked against its opponents.
If one is repeated, the word will not have a score, otherwise it will be considered valid. Whoever gets the most points wins the round. The benefits? Well, in addition to entertaining you with family or friends, it develops the response capacity of your brain, as well as the creation of neural circuits that allow you to increase the speed of reaction.
Riddles and riddles
Since childhood, riddles or riddles always attract our attention. These basically consist of the enunciation of particular characteristics of some object or element, which must have a rhyme in their sentences while they are enunciated and that the participant must guess what it is, following the clues given.
Believe it or not, riddles or riddles are one of the activities that provide the greatest stimulation to the brain. Whether it's a simple riddle for kids or a complex brain teaser, it has the ability to develop memory, concentration, and logical relationships, both linguistic and visual.
tetris
As you are reading it: Tetris! This logical spatial reasoning video game created in the former Soviet Union in 1984 and which became popular with the arrival of video game consoles in the 90s, is a perfect stimulant for the cerebral cortex of the left hemisphere of our brain.
The game, which basically consists of making certain geometric figures fit perfectly between previous spaces in order to complete lines that will gradually disappear and open up the possibilities of the game, allow an interaction between sight and logic, as well as the perception of space.
rubik's cube
This game consists of a three-dimensional puzzle developed in the 8s. It has six colors and a mechanism that allows each face of the cube to rotate independently, so that its colors can be arranged on each side.
This magnificent game that exercises the mind, allows you to develop the capacity for attention, concentration, promoting creativity and improving memory and visual-spatial capacity.
tongue twisters
Tongue twisters, those short sentences or phrases that include paronymous sounds or words (that resemble each other), which when read quickly, make it difficult to pronounce them correctly.
These exercises are made to trick the brain; they constitute a neuromotor challenge for our dynamic and organized organ, which tries to create the neural circuits that quickly allow it to master the phonetic strategy. Therefore, among its benefits is the stimulation of the left cerebral cortex, responsible for speech.
As a complement to the exercises presented here, we invite you to read our article on mental agility for you to develop a mind of champions.