The cognitive activities They can help stimulate cognitive abilities such as attention, memory, concentration, creativity, orientation, calculation, among others. In this article we will explain 10 simple exercises.
Are you less mentally agile, do you have memory loss, or have difficulty maintaining attention for a long time? Do you have a hard time concentrating on a particular task?
We can work different muscles of our body through physical activity, physical exercise or sport. Well, brain work is done through what we know today as cognitive stimulation.
The years do not pass in vain for our brain, since in the same way that our body, it is aging. Our brain structures are deteriorating, neuronal loss advances, the production of neurotransmitters decreases ...
All these actions are important variables that, obviously, reveal their consequences in the general functioning of our mind..
However, we have good news. The human brain, like any other muscle in our anatomy, can be worked on, with the aim of enhancing its cognitive abilities.
If you read this article carefully, you will learn what cognitive stimulation is, what its benefits are and how it can work. You may also be interested in these games to train the mind.
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The term "Plasticity of the nervous system" refers to this potential that our brain has to modify, adapt and enhance its structures and its functioning.
Thus, cognitive stimulation is the name given to techniques and strategies that seek to optimize the effectiveness of brain function through the different cognitive capacities that human beings possess:
All these cognitive functions are performed and trained by human beings practically daily. When we read a book we work on our language and memory, when we drive down an unfamiliar street our orientation, when we pay attention to our boss's work instructions, etc..
Now, do we do enough cognitive work throughout the day? Probably a person who is studying, reads frequently, or has a job that requires a lot of brain activity will do it.
However, it could be that we work a lot on some cognitive functions, but at the same time we are neglecting others ... Well, this is exactly what cognitive stimulation aims to do: to ensure a complete work of all our cognitive functions.
The answer is simple. Cognitive stimulation can be applied to anyone, since, as you will surely agree with me, any of us can improve our mental abilities.
Cognitive stimulation has two main objectives:
This type of intervention is usually witnessed in early intervention programs in childhood, training in attention or concentration in athletes, the enhancement of professional skills in different jobs, etc..
However, you do not have to be in any of these situations to work it, since the performance that you can get from cognitive stimulation is not specific to any vital area, since who will benefit will be your cognitive functions, it will be your brain, it will be you!
That is to say: when you do cognitive work, you activate, stimulate and train different cognitive capacities and their components in a systematic way, with the aim of transforming them into a skill or skill..
Now, after remarking that cognitive stimulation is beneficial for any human being on the planet, we must review its therapeutic role, which practically encompasses the function of this technique in its entirety..
And it is that when we talk about the therapeutic role of cognitive stimulation, we are talking about cognitive impairment, cognitive deficit or dementia.
If you do not have any cognitive deficits, you can benefit from cognitive stimulation activities to improve your skills and prolong the aging of the brain..
If, on the other hand, you already have any symptoms of deterioration, cognitive stimulation must become part of your life yes or yes! Today, cognitive stimulation is the first-choice treatment for cognitive impairment and different types of dementia, the most common of which is Alzheimer's.
These pathologies are, at present, irreversible and incurable, but this does not mean that the evolution of the disease cannot be slowed down..
This is where cognitive stimulation comes into play, since it is beneficial to improve skills when we do not have any pathology, it is also very beneficial to preserve those that we still have when we have a cognitive deficit..
Thus, although there are currently some drugs aimed at cognitive enhancement such as acetylcholinesterase inhibitors (tacrine, donepezil, rivastigmine and galantamine), performing cognitive stimulation is considered essential for the treatment of dementia and cognitive impairment.
Let's go to see what are the benefits of cognitive stimulation.
To do this we will divide the advantages into two different groups. On the one hand, the advantages of cognitive stimulation for the individual without cognitive impairment, be it a child, adolescent, adult or the elderly, and on the other hand, the benefits for the individual with some type of cognitive deficit or dementia.
If you don't have any cognitive deficits, cognitive stimulation will be very useful to:
If you have a cognitive deficit or dementia syndrome, cognitive stimulation will be essential to:
A typical exercise to work attention is the typical "alphabet soup". This exercise allows to work effectively the attention processes as well as the concentration of the individual.
One of the most typical and widely used activities is mathematical operations. Depending on the level of operation and / or deterioration, they will be more or less complex.
Continue the number series:
Executive functions allow us to schedule activities. So a useful exercise is to plan activities of daily living. Order the following phrases so that they make sense:
-Wait for the oil to heat up. 1-…
-Light the fire. two-…
-Put oil in the pan. 3-…
-Put the egg in the pan. 4-… .
The main symptom of language impairment is anomie. Anomie occurs when it is difficult for us to remember the name of things, a fact that interrupts our speech and makes it difficult for us to express ourselves..
A suitable activity to stimulate this function would be the naming of quantities of objects according to categories. In this way memory and language are worked simultaneously.
Write 8 names of:
Memory can be worked according to its different modalities: working memory, short-term memory, long-term memory, etc. Use an arrow to link the following foods with the Spanish region of which they are characteristic.
Praxia is the ability that allows us to carry out movements of purpose. Therefore, an effective way to stimulate this cognitive function is to draw different objects such as:
Draw the following objects:
Gnosia is the ability that allows us to recognize previously known stimuli. An exercise to work on this function is to be able to locate different regions on a map.
The game of matching pairs is a very good exercise to work on working memory, immediate memory and learning.
This famous game consists of putting papers (if you do it yourself) or figures (if you buy one of these ready-made games) in such a way that a drawing is shown at the bottom.
Each drawing contains a couple on another figure / paper, and the game consists of lifting them two by two, remembering which drawing has come out, to be able to lift two figures that contain the same.
Find the differences games help to work on short-term memory.
To work on orientation, it is convenient to ask and / or remind the person of the different aspects that allow them to maintain their spatial orientation (where they are, what street, neighborhood, etc.) in person (what is their name, what year they were born, how did call their children, etc.) and temporary (what day is today, month, week, etc.).
In short, taking care of our brain should be an obligation for any of us, and cognitive stimulation a more than effective resource that allows us to increase our mental capacities.
What exercises are you practicing for your cognitive stimulation?
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