The human body is moldable. It is programmed to adapt to the conditions of the environment in which we live, in our society we have many facilities to direct the changes that we want to occur in our brains, so reaching maximum potential through mental training will depend on the challenges we impose on ourselves and how we deal with daily obstacles.
Mental training is one of the resources we have to improve or refine our mental processes. This is possible by performing tasks that stimulate the mind and gradually improve our skills. Mental capacity has a certain genetic burden, but we cannot simply hold our DNA accountable because we have the ability to implement strategies that improve it.
- Cognitive skills training is very similar to body training.
- So to improve the mind it is necessary to leave the comfort zone.
- You have to exercise.
- Be persistent.
- Gradually increase the difficulty of exercise.
- Certain task.
- We do it automatically.
- We stop being a training to become a routine.
Here are some tips on the types of mental training to exercise your brain and reach its full potential:
Aerobic exercise, which involves breathing, benefits brain abilities, especially those based on better interaction between the frontal and temporal medial lobes; influences working memory and executive functions; the sport’s interest in cognition has a physiological explanation: it promotes the production of neurotrophic agents.
Neurotrophic substances increase synaptic plasticity, neurogenesis and cerebral vascularity, reducing loss of brain volume in the elderly, especially in the hippocampus, responsible for memory and learning. For exercise to be beneficial, it’s important to practice regularly, about thirty minutes a day.
Cardiovascular exercises should be adapted to individual abilities. If you’re a person who’s never exercised before, you can start walking, playing tennis or swimming. The cognitive benefits of sport persist into old age, acting as a protector against diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease.
Working memory exercise is very useful for stimulating our cognitive abilities, there are many exercises for it. One of the tasks created for this purpose is to observe a screen where a figure appears and disappears, and after a while it is repeated, you have to see if it appeared in the same place as the previous time.
The difficulty of the task can be gradually increased by asking, for example, if in the last three presentations the figure was in the same place, forcing our brain to save the recent information for a while and then compare it with the current information. What this work has is that it has been shown that fulfilling this task stimulates other skills, such as the fluidity of reasoning.
Any task that requires hearing or visual information retention over a period of time exercises working memory and is a form of mental training, such as listening to a series of numbers and repeating them in reverse order. an average level of execution and adapt to your skills. It’s important to find the balance between what’s required and your ability, so you don’t get frustrated.
We cannot accommodate ourselves, but we can do new activities to exercise the spirit. Finding intellectually challenging hobbies like learning to play an instrument or learning a new language are also mental exercises. For example, if you like to watch series, start by watching them in their original version with Portuguese subtitles. We can also watch with English subtitles, until you can see them without subtitles. It is a good way to train other languages.
We must continue to learn throughout life, children learn every day because it is part of their development, they are easier to learn because their neuroplasticity is at their peak, but as we have seen recently, it is never too late to learn.
For us it makes sense to adapt the activities to the skills and age of the person and, of course, these must be activities that they like, the motivation is essential not to give up a Sudoku activity, crossword puzzles or group fans, such as playing chess, can be even more beneficial. Social relationships also have a positive impact on cognitive levels.
It is one of the most effective forms of mental training, low cost and with great benefits, it does not require the use of high-cost technology and tools, we can do it anywhere, and it is a pleasant activity. The sooner you start the habit of reading, the better. Therefore, it is important to encourage children to read news and stories.
Reading stimulates many mental processes, such as perception, memory, and reasoning. When we read, we decode visual stimuli (letters, words, phrases) by transforming them into mental sounds to give them meaning. Reading stimulates the mind because it activates large areas of the cerebral cortex.
Reading can unleash your imagination, encourage creativity and help you learn a new vocabulary. It’s a way to keep learning in a peaceful and fun way. Among the factors that influence cognitive reserve, reading is one of the most important. Several studies claim that reading from childhood can promote a high cognitive reserve.
When we talk about animals, such as mice with which experiments are conducted, an enriched environment is one that stimulates the animal, visual and audible stimuli that allow the mouse to receive information from the environment, if we apply it to people, an enriched environment would be to be an environment full of novelties and complexity, an environment where there is a lot of change and that forces us to adapt.
For example, a child who grew up in an enriched environment was always surrounded by new information and encouraged to interact, for example, a family that plays the piano at home and teaches his children, which encourages reading, critical thinking, allowing the child to think and learn. An environment that offers challenges and allows children to find their own solutions.
According to Stern, this type of complex environment offers two types of resources. On the one hand, would you provide us with material? With more synapses and greater dendritic wood; and a “software” with tighter cognitive abilities. For adulthood, living in an enriched environment means having an active life, both physically and mentally.
To improve our cognitive abilities, shouldn’t we do mental training only through arithmetic, mental flexibility, memory exercises?But also exercises that stimulate our creativity. Music, painting, dance or theater are activities that stimulate creativity and are also a fun that you can make in your free time, fighting inactivity.
The realization of this type of activity offers greater flexibility and mental originality, associated with the activation of specific neural networks. Creativity has a positive effect on resilience and therefore helps to cope with the losses and changes that inevitably accompany adulthood.
Creativity can have a positive impact through its influence on other levels such as motivation, increased social relationships or cognitive components. Any task that forces us out of the routine and meet new people will have an impact on quality of life, especially among the elderly.
Language is one of the most complex superior functions and involves more areas of the cerebral cortex. Humans have the innate ability to learn languages especially in childhood due to brain neuroplasticity. However, we can learn languages for life. Learning a new language is a good form of mental training.
Several studies have been conducted on the benefits of bilingualism, which improves selective attention and develops the habit of exchanging mental content, it is very beneficial to learn two languages as we learn to speak and practice in the family, social and educational environment. Learn another language after childhood, the second language will be subordinate to the first.
Learning to speak a second language is the only way to generate language automations without translating everything simultaneously from the mother tongue, so it’s not worth studying a language two hours a week where you only learn grammar and don’t use conversation. , it is better to learn through exchanges with natives, for example.
Cognitive stimulation and an active lifestyle can prevent neurodegenerative diseases or compensate for neurological injuries by increasing our cognitive reserve and triggering mechanisms for compensating for brain damage. Mental training exercises are not only important in old age, it is important to perform them throughout the process. our lives.
Escape the routine, be an active person, wanting to learn and discover new things that will help you get the most out of your mind. Intellectual challenges, getting out of monotony and inactivity are the most effective forms of mental training. It’s not just about doing math or memory exercises, it’s about changing habits.
In research on cognitive reserve, it was concluded that the main factors influencing the plasticity of the brain are: the work that the person does throughout life, the habit of reading, the years of study and the network of friends. to be shaped from our first year of life, and this process continues throughout our lives until our death, giving us the opportunity to consciously intervene at any time in our process architecture.