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Mental Fitness Brain Exercises


Mental Fitness Brain Exercises

Perceptive skills exercises. Practice perception in all five senses (sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste).

Sight worth seeing. Every day, observe an object like a person, chair, dog, desk, car, etc. that you pass as you walk around the streets or in a building. Draw that object immediately. This practice helps the short term memory. At the end of a week or seven days, redraw the seven objects you observed. This practice will help the long term memory.

Sites around you. Draw a map from memory. After returning home from visiting or discovering a new place, draw a map of the area; repeat this exercise each time you visit or discover a new site.

Challenge your Smell and Taste. When you are at a restaurant or visiting family or friends to eat, try to identify the individual ingredients in the dishes you are eating. Focus on the subtle flavorings of herbs and spices, and get verification of your perceptions.

Test Memory Recall. Try to memorize the food offered on your favorite restaurant's menu. For more of a challenge try and memorize the prices as well. At the end of the day, try and recall, then write down as many of the dishes and prices as you can.

Total Recall. Make a list of grocery items, things to do, etc. and memorize it. An hour or so later, see how many items you can recall. Make it as challenging as possible for the greatest mental stimulation.

Hearing and Sounds. With the telephone, exercise recognizing callers before they identify themselves. Next, memorize the callers phone numbers. At the end of the day, write down the names and phone numbers of the people you have spoken with that day. At the end of the week, try to remember and write down as many of these names and numbers, as you can.

The Smell and Touch Test. Practice your sense of smell and touch by trying to identify objects with your eyes closed.

Interlock with your senses. Try activities that involve as many of your senses as possible, such as landscaping and or gardening.

Course in Cooking. Learn a new way to cook. Cooking uses a number of senses: smell, touch, sight, and taste, which all use different parts of the brain.

Learn a foreign language. The listening and hearing involved, stimulates the brain.

Play the music. Study music or learn to play a musical instrument.

Practice your visuospatial skills. Visuospatial skills are related to the ability to make quick and accurate estimates of distances, areas, and volumes, the general proportions of things and their distribution in space.
Try the following:
When you walk into a room with a group of people, try to quickly determine how many are on your right and your left, as well as the left right distribution of furniture and any other objects.

Observe objects pens, for instance and try to estimate their length and thickness.

When you have visited somewhere and then return home, try to draw a plan or map of the place you have seen. Repeat this exercise the next day and the day after.

Figure math in your head. Figure out problems without the aid of pencil, paper, or computer; you can make this more difficult by walking at the same time. Try a new sport. Take up an athletic exercise that utilizes the mind and body, like golf or basketball.

Practice your structuralization ability. Structuralization involves building a logical whole from disparate elements after close observation of the elements. The following exercises will strengthen this ability.

Take a sentence from a magazine or newspaper. Try to make another sentence using the same words.

Buy a jigsaw puzzle and practice fitting the pieces together as quickly as possible. Note the time it takes you to do this. Do it again a week later and note the time it takes to do it.

Refine your hand to eye skills. Learn a new skill that involves fine motor skills, such as knitting, drawing, painting, assembling a puzzle, etc.

Practice your logic skills. Logic is the art of reasoning, finding an orderly sequence for disparate elements. The following exercises/activities will awaken the inherently logical being inside of you.

Don't use a list when shopping. Instead, invent a system to take the place of the list. Use memory aids, such as forming a complete word, or one that can be completed by adding a certain vowel or consonant from the first letters of the words for the things you need to buy. Or, you can classify foods into raw and cooked. Or, use any other system that works for you.

All games involve logical activities. Card games such as pinochle and bridge or board games of strategy such as chess or checkers are good choices. So are crossword puzzles anagrams, and other word games.

Avoid playing the same games all the time. Playing the same game all the time leads to routine, which is the opposite of activation. The same cerebral circuits and neuronal regions are constantly used and everything else remains unused.

Find new games and interests. Explore activities that are completely new to you and find new partners for old--and new--games and activities.

Exercise your verbal abilities. Verbal abilities are the precise use of spoken or written words, make demands on short-term and long-term memory.

Listen to the morning news on the radio or TV. During the day, write down the main points of the news that you remember. Do the same in the evening.

Whenever you meet someone, try to come up with at least one anagram (a word or phrase made by transposing the letters of the or word or phrase) of his or her name. When you see a word any word quickly think of others that begin with the same two letters.

Generate word pictures. Visualize the spelling of a word in your head, then try and think of any other words that begin (or end) with the same two letters.

Each time you come to the end of a chapter in a book you are reading, imagine that you must summarize it as briefly as possible, orally or in writing, to someone who has not read it. Do the same for the whole book when you finish it.

Establish the mentally fit lifestyle. Doing mental exercises are especially important for older people. Overcome monotony and routine in the daily life. Monotony generates mental (and emotional) lethargy and resignation. The antidote is to organize your life in such a way that you become involved and you open yourself to others through dialogue, interaction, and confrontation. Failing memory and sluggish thinking are not inevitable cohorts of aging. You have the ability to maximize your cognitive skills and enhance, your older years.