How Brain Training Works
The brain is undoubtedly the most important organ of the human body. Being the center of the nervous system is a very complex organ that performs complex activities making humans what they are.
Why is the brain called the most important organ of the human body?
Because this organ controls and also regulates the actions and reactions of the entire body. It receives in a constant way sensory information, analyzes this data and then responds, controlling in this way our actions and functions.
The human brain has the same general structure as the brains of other mammals but is more than three times larger than the brain of mammals with equivalent body size.
What is certain is that the brain is responsible for regulation of the emotional and sexual behavior, for the way we hear and see things, for training plans and programming actions, in a word: for all of our actions.
Brain function is so complex and sophisticated that there are still many unanswered questions, but maybe this is one of the reasons why the human brain is one of the greatest wonders of mother nature.
Nowadays, human beings are so concerned about the way they look that only focus on body training often forgetting that the brain also needs to be trained.
How to Exercise the Brain
There are many answers to this question and some of them can be defined by one word: hobbies. Everyone has a hobby and since it is well-known that there are hobbies which can help people train their brain, it might be a good idea to pick up one of that list:
Reading
There are several reasons why reading is considered one of the best hobbies, if not the best. Reading a book or a magazine or a simple newspaper in a physical or electronic format it is always a good idea.
It is something that we can start at a time and continue later whenever the time allows us to do it. Besides this, reading it’s a smart way to build an inexpensive hobby. Reading is to the brain what running is for our body, a perfect way to keep us in a great shape. This affordable hobby keeps the brain fit like all stimulating mental activities.
Reading could even help preventing Alzheimer’s disease because it helps to improve our memory. It is also responsible for training the left hemisphere of the brain. According to Natalie Phillips [1], (responsible for an investigation that did MRIs to people who were reading.) while reading there is a substantial increase blood flow in the brain because she says that “paying attention to literary texts requires the coordination of multiple complex cognitive functions.”
Specialists say that reading is good for us because helps us to concentrate and to focus on just a subject instead of concentrate on twenty different subjects at the same time.
Reading it’s a game where the reader is never the loser.
Music
Music as a hobby it’s a way to train our brain because it improves intellect and develops thinking skills. When listening to music, we exercise our brain in a different way, a unique one. According to Dr. Charles Limb[2], a professor at the University Hopkins, who already wrote several publications about the ways the brain can be trained, the musical experience changes the brain, improving its functions, functions that surprisingly have nothing to do with music.
It’s not true that classical music makes humans being smarter, but it is true that listening to classical music gives the brain a better environment to develop ideas and also to restore neural connections, allowing us to be more alert, to concentrate better and to improve different learning procedures.
A study by the University of Irvine, conducted by Frances Rausher, demonstrated that listening to complex parts by Mozart improves the learning skills of students. The reason is that the abstract reasoning that is activated with the study, active patterns similar to music.[3]
The music affects the brain in a positive way, being at the same time a nice way to enrich our lives. Another advantage is that music can be used to stimulate the brain at different stages of life, from babies and newborns to adults and seniors.
Learning New Languages
Studying a different language is one of the best friends of our brain because this process slows the aging of the brain and also raises its productivity. Scientists from University College London from the UK had examined 105 people (80 of them were bilingual) and found that knowing a second language modifies the structure of the brain in a positive way. A different language improves brain plasticity, learning, and memory. Studies found that bilingual postpones the symptoms of Alzheimer with 4 or 5 years.
Video games
We must be honest and recognize that each of us has played at least once a game that caused us addiction.
The twenty-first century promises to be the true “century of video games” since we can play on the computer or using our mobile phones, or on a games console.
Because of this, it is clear that video games are a hobby of many people. Of course video games as a hobby is also a good way to train our brain.
Video games enhance visual attention. According to some specialists (researchers from the University of Rochester), there are certain video games that help humans to improve their visual attention, mostly the games that include a lot of action.
The reason is that during the game, the players pay far greater attention to important details for the game, leaving aside the irrelevant information. Games also improve concentration and increase reaction speed.
There are also several games and exercises specially created by specialists in order to train the brain and to improve its condition and its health status.
It is proven that when people do something with pleasure, the positive effect on the body, in this case on the brain, is noticeably higher.
This is the reason why appeared games specifically designed to train the brain in a pleasant way without feeling the pressure of an activity imposed.
There are plenty of online resources for online games so we name a few here:
- gamesforthebrain.com | where we can play games like Sudoku, MasterCard, The Game that You Name, What Was There? etc.
- lumosity.com | perfect to start your brain training choosing from more than 50 cognitive games.
- neuronation.com | with games made by scientists to improve our cognition.
There are also mobile applications designed to train the human brain daily.
Thank these apps, all we have to do to train the brain is to download them and start playing:
- CogniFit Brain Fitness – an application designed by neuroscientists to improve memory and concentration using addictive games
- PersonalZen – developed by Dr. Dennis helps to reduce anxiety. The idea of this app is to teach us how to focus more on the positive and less on the negative.
- Happify – a perfect idea to train our brain to be happier.
Many of them are very simple and easy to practice in our daily activities. There are plenty of ways to make our brain more efficient: we can choose hobbies that train our brain, games, application on our mobile phone. The brain is an organ easy to train because all our actions are related to the brain, so, we can train it through everything we do.
We are what we eat
A proper diet can help for the good functioning of our brain in unexpected quantities. There are foods that help improve the brain functioning, and because there are many people addicted to chocolate in our world, is a good thing to remember that dark chocolate is indispensable in this diet. The reason is the production of dopamine which helps us learn faster and also to remember things better.
Fruits, fish, vegetable, and many others help the proper functioning of the most important human organ.
For proper functioning of the brain, it is important not to forget that sport is necessary. Any activity that is good for the body will have a positive effect on the brain training. It is also a pleasure to remind that for proper brain functionality, time spent with loved ones is essential. Bottomline, the more you train your brain, the smarter you are !
[1] http://www.cal.msu.edu/phillips/
[2] https://vkc.mc.vanderbilt.edu/smpc2015/limb/
[3] http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/students/lerch1/edpsy/mozart_effect.html