Cognitive stimulation exercises

There are certain pathologies, age advancement and some life habits that are not at all suitable in our health and that can deteriorate cognitive functioning. When this happens, we lose responsiveness, memory, and other reasoning capabilities we normally had. However, there are techniques and exercises of cognitive stimulation that help us prevent the deterioration of our mind and, in addition, improve the functioning of our mental abilities.

In this article we will talk to you some of the best cognitive stimulation exercises.

What is cognitive stimulation?

The first thing we need 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 widespread especially in therapeutic interventions diseases that usually generate cognitive impairment. Alzheimer’s is one of the best known diseases of cognitive impairment. Normally, with the advancement of age and aging we need a training of the mind to be able to achieve and maintain the same responsiveness.

To do this, we carry out a variety of activities that stimulate brain capabilities. Let’s see below some of the techniques and exercises of cognitive stimulation.

Technitics and exercises of cognitive stimulation

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

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

Another type of cognitive stimulation exercises are so-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. In addition, having numerous images and sounds can help improve cognitive memory. They offer the possibility of being able to regulate difficulty levels by adjusting to the level of each person. We cannot put the same level of difficulty if we are practicing with children or 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 principles of advanced equipment that are able to record our brain activity in such a way that it can adapt individually. Some interventions and surveillance are needed to monitor the evolution of each individual in these tests.

It is important to note that cognitive stimulation can be effective as long as it adapts to the cognitive and potential level of each person. We may be involving people with less mental capacity to exercises that are above their level and believe that negative results mean that the person is not moving forward. We need to adapt these exercises to the cognitive ability of the person and after that, and gradually evaluating the evolution of the same.

It is interesting to carry out some activities that promote motivation and interest and 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

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

Let’s look at the best known exercises:

• Exercises for care: They are those who try to improve attention and rely on different activities to increase it. We have sustained attention, visual attention, selective auditory, etc.
• Exercises for perception: these are those that try to improve both visual and victim and tactile perception of people. It can be performed by exercises dynamically and entertaining.
• Exercises for comprehension: Try to improve basic cognitive abilities and are related to other skills to develop them and increase performance.
• Exercises for memory: 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 active continuously. To do this, we can do exercises of numerous types such as visualizing images, answering questions, memorizing word lists, etc.
• Exercises for language: one of the fundamental cognitive abilities that people have to communicate with each other is language. Developing this language from an early age is fundamental. We can do exercises, write synonyms and antonyms, word series, generate new words with combination of initials and show word sequences, among other
• Exercises for processingspeed: processing speed or is a mental process that establishes the relationship between the cognitive execution and the time spent on it. It’s like the time it took us to respond to a stimulus. With these exercises you will exercise to improve information and be able to process it faster without losing efficiency and improving performance.
• Exercises for counseling: both children, the elderly can present problems and difficulties in orientation. You can do some activities such as reading texts and then answer questions, place person in an unknown place and provide 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 issue.