Games That will Super Charge Your Brain

"Using your brain to solve creative challenges is excellent practice and will help slow down the effects of aging. The limitation with [games alone] is that they don't have enough variety or novelty to work out all your mental muscles.

Have you ever seen the guys in the gym with the buff upper bodies supported by little chicken legs? The same thing can happen in your brain. Just as you crosstrain in your physical fitness routine (mixing cardio with strength training and flexibility) to get a balanced workout, you need to crosstrain your mental fitness to exercise your brain through motor coordination, emotional understanding, memory, focus and attention, sensory communication, language skills, and mental visualization.

Furthermore, how can you gauge your improvement if you don't have a way to measure it? Using computer software to give you a baseline score, work out, and follow up test gives you a measure of your improvement. A structured program should give you assessment, novelty, and performance-based challenge while (hopefully!) being fun. That mental stimulation can dramatically increase the rate of neurogenesis, or the creation of new neurons and the connections between neurons."
(Brain Coach Answers)

Which leads me to Lumosity.

Did you know that the human brain starts slowing down as early as age 30? The good news is that you can speed it up, and improve even your most basic cognitive abilities at any age. Keep your brain performing at its best with Lumosity, a brain training program consisting of engaging brain games and exercises developed by some of the leading neuroscientists in the country.

• Scientific brain training games


• Improve memory and attention


• Feedback and tracking


• Full workout in only 10 minutes

• Sudoku:
  Sudoku is a logic-based number-placement puzzle. The objective is to fill a 9×9 grid so that each column, each row, and each of the nine 3×3 boxes (also called blocks or regions) contains the digits from 1 to 9 only one time each. The puzzle begins with a partially completed grid.
  


• Hidato:
  Get off the grid and play Hidato! Fans of Sudoku will love Hidato, a tricky online game of numbers and logic. Start the game with a game board that is partially filled with numbered tiles. Complete the puzzle by placing the rest of a series of numbers on the board. Consecutive numbers must touch horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. Each puzzle has exactly 1 solution. With no math required, Hidato is guaranteed to have you crunching numbers in no time.
  


• Bloxorz:
  Bloxorz is a brain twisting puzzle game of rolling blocks and switching bridges. You'll be rolling round in circles over the course of the 33 levels. Yes, they are all possible to finish.
  


• Chess:
  Chess is a recreational and competitive game played between two players. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide. The game is played on a chequered chessboard with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight square. At the start, each player (one controlling the white pieces, the other controlling the black pieces) controls sixteen pieces. The object of the game is to checkmate the opponent's king, whereby the king is under immediate attack (in "check") and there is no way to remove it from attack on the next move.
  


• Crossword Puzzles:
  A crossword is a word puzzle that normally takes the form of a square or rectangular grid of black and white squares. The goal is to fill the white squares with letters, forming words or phrases, by solving clues which lead to the answers. In languages which are written left-to-right, the answer words and phrases are placed in the grid from left to right and from top to bottom. The black squares are used to separate the words or phrases.
  

Despite being the strongest computer on the planet, our brains do lapse. It's hard to blame them really. As humans, we spend much of or existence stuffing our brains with stuff.

No matter how powerful our brains are, they need recuperation time to be kept in shape. Think of it as a tune up for your brain. Skipping brain maintenance is as silly as the person wandering the parking garage because they forgot where they parked. Is that you? Are you that person? If so, fear not; we are all that person at some point.

Now I am not a brain surgeon and I am not going to suggest you do anything surgical or dangerous. I am however an astute student of human behavior so I always look for simple ways to super charge my brain.

Here are some things you can begin doing as soon as today to begin the great brain tune up:

Eat Almonds
Almond is believed to improve memory. If a combination of almond oil and milk is taken together before going to bed or after getting up at morning, it strengthens our memory power. Almond milk is prepared by crushing the almonds without the outer cover and adding water and sugar to it.

Drink Apple Juice
Research from the University of Massachusetts Lowell (UML)
indicates that apple juice increases the production of the essential neurotransmitter acetylcholine in the brain, resulting in an increased memory power.

Sleep well
Research indicates that the long-term memory is consolidated during sleep by replaying the images of the experiences of the day. These repeated playbacks program the subconscious mind to store these images and other related information.

Enjoy simple Pleasures
Stress drains our brainpower. A stress-ridden mind consumes much of our memory resources to leave us with a feeble mind. Make a habit to engage yourself in few simple pleasures everyday to dissolve stress from your mind. Some of these simple pleasures are good for your mind, body and soul.

• Enjoy music you love


• Play with your children


• Appreciate others


• Run few miles a day, bike or swim


• Start a blog


• Take a yoga class or Total Wellness routine

Exercise your mind
Just as physical exercise is essential for a strong body, mental exercise is equally essential for a sharp and agile mind. Have you noticed that children have far superior brainpower than an adult does? Children have playful minds. A playful mind exhibits superior memory power. Engage in some of the activities that require your mind to remain active and playful.

• Play scrabble or crossword puzzle


• Volunteer


• Interact with others


• Start a new hobby such as blogging, reading, painting, bird watching


• Learn new skill or a foreign language

Practice Yoga or Meditation
Yoga or Meditation relives stress. Stress is a known memory buster. With less stress, lower blood pressure, slower respiration, slower metabolism, and released muscle tension follows. All of these factors contribute significantly towards increases in our brainpower.

Reduce Sugar intake
Sugar is a non-food. It's a form of carbohydrate that offers illusionary energy, only to cause a downhill slump once the initial burst has been worn off. Excess intake of sugar results in neurotic symptoms. Excess sugar is known to cause claustrophobia, memory loss and other neurotic disorders. Eat food without adding sugar. Stay away from sweet drinks or excess consumption of caffeine with sugar.

Eat whole wheat
The whole wheat germs contain lecithin. Lecithin helps ease the problem of the hardening of the arteries, which often impairs brain functioning.

Eat a light meal at night
A heavy meal at night causes tossing and turning and a prolonged emotional stress while at sleep. It's wise to eat heavy meal during the day when our body is in motion to consume the heavy in-take. Eating a light meal with some fruits allows us to sleep well. A good night sleep strengthens our brainpower.

Develop imagination
Greeks mastered the principle of imagination and association to memorize everything. This technique requires one to develop a vivid and colorful imagination that can be linked to a known object. If you involve all your senses - touching, feeling, smelling, hearing and seeing in the imagination process, you can remember greater details of the event.

Control your temper
Bleached food, excess of starch or excess of white bread can lead to nerve grating effect. This results in a violent and some time depressive behavior. Eat fresh vegetables. Drink lots of water and meditate or practice yoga to relieve these toxic emotions of temper and
stressful mood swings.

Take Vitamin B-complex
Vitamin B-complex strengthens memory power. Eat food and vegetables high in Vitamin B-complex. Stay away from the starch food or white bread, which depletes the Vitamin B-complex necessary for a healthy mind.

I don't believe these are that tough. If you find yourself increasing stumped, give a couple of these a try.

Written by Shilpan Patel of Success Soul and cross-posted from Dumb Little Man, a web site that provides tips for life that will save you money, increase your productivity, or simply keep you sane.

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