brain-teasers-kids

Quick brain teasers to exercise your working memory

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Draw the let­ter J in your mind.

Now draw the let­ter D. Turn it 90 degrees to the left and put it in top of the J.

What does this shape resem­ble? [Read more…] about Quick brain teasers to exer­cise your work­ing memory

Math Brain Teaser: How to Choose a Mans Shirt

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You have been invit­ed to an impor­tant fundrais­ing gala at your old col­lege and decid­ed that this black-tie event demands a short col­lar super white Ital­ian shirt, like the one you bought years ago for your wed­ding. When you brave­ly tried the wed­ding shirt on (size 16), your wife not­ed that the col­lar suf­fo­cates you and you need about 1/4″ more space every­where in-between your neck and the col­lar all around your neck. What size shirt do you need to buy?  In case you don’t know the shirt size 16 means that a tape wrapped around your neck and two fin­gers posi­tioned flat upfront will mea­sure 16 inches.

[Read more…] about Math Brain Teas­er: How to Choose a Mans Shirt

Top Ten Brain Teasers and Games for Kids and Adults alike

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Over the last Hourglass four years we have post­ed over 100 puz­zles, teasers, rid­dles, illu­sions, and every form of men­tal exer­cise that both chal­lenges and enlight­ens our minds.

Below you have a selec­tion of the ten most pop­u­lar ones among Sharp­Brains read­ers. Enjoy! [Read more…] about Top Ten Brain Teasers and Games for Kids and Adults alike

Brain Games: Spot the Difference

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How many dif­fer­ences can you spot?

You have seen and maybe tried that exer­cise or game in the Sun­day paper many times: find 5 dif­fer­ences between the two images.

You may like it or not. You may think it is only for kids. But it is a GREAT brain exercise!

Let’s see what cog­ni­tive process­es and which brain areas are involved in this exercise:

[Read more…] about Brain Games: Spot the Difference

Brain teaser game to stimulate your temporal lobes

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Do you know where words are stored in your brain?

In your tem­po­ral lobe!

As you know, the brain has two sides (two hemi­spheres) con­nect­ed by the cor­pus cal­lo­sum. So you have one tem­po­ral lobe on each side of the brain.

If you are right-hand­ed, your lan­guage is stored most­ly in your left tem­po­ral lobe. If you are left-hand­ed, you are not so lat­er­al­ized and your lan­guage is stored a bit on both sides of your brain in the tem­po­ral lobes.

Words in the brain are not stored ran­dom­ly. They seemed to be quite orga­nized. Research has shown that words that are often heard togeth­er (such as salt and pep­per) or words that share some mean­ing (such as nurse and doc­tor) are con­nect­ed or asso­ci­at­ed in the brain. Once you hear one, the oth­er is activated.

Here is a men­tal exer­cise whose aim is to stim­u­late the con­nec­tions or asso­ci­a­tions between words in your tem­po­ral lobe.

In the left col­umn you have a [Read more…] about Brain teas­er game to stim­u­late your tem­po­ral lobes

Cognitive training research: MindFit, Lumosity, Posit Science, Cogmed

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The field of com­put­er-based cog­ni­tive train­ing (part of what we call “Brain Fit­ness”) is start­ing to get trac­tion in the media and becom­ing an emerg­ing indus­try, and we are hap­py to see how a grow­ing num­ber of researchers and sci­ence-based com­pa­nies are lead­ing stud­ies that will allow to bet­ter mea­sure results and refine the brain exer­cise soft­ware available.

Pub­lished new research

  • Com­put­er­ized work­ing mem­o­ry train­ing after stroke‑A pilot study. A pub­lished study on how Cogmed work­ing mem­o­ry train­ing may help stroke patients. See the ref­er­ence at Cogmed Research page (and full arti­cle here)
  • The Jour­nals of Geron­tol­ogy pub­lished a series of relat­ed papers in their June issue, includ­ing this by Kar­lene Ball, Jer­ri D. Edwards, and Les­ley A. Ross on The Impact of Speed of Pro­cess­ing Train­ing on Cog­ni­tive and Every­day Func­tions, J Geron­tol B Psy­chol Sci Soc Sci 2007 62: 19–31.  Abstract: “We com­bined data from six stud­ies, all using the same speed of pro­cess­ing train­ing pro­gram, to exam­ine the mech­a­nisms of train­ing gain and the impact of train­ing on cog­ni­tive and every­day abil­i­ties of old­er adults. Results indi­cat­ed that train­ing pro­duces imme­di­ate improve­ments across all sub­tests of the Use­ful Field of View test, par­tic­u­lar­ly for old­er adults with ini­tial speed of pro­cess­ing deficits. Age and edu­ca­tion had lit­tle to no impact on train­ing gain. Par­tic­i­pants main­tained ben­e­fits of train­ing for at least 2 years, which trans­lat­ed to improve­ments in every­day abil­i­ties, includ­ing effi­cient per­for­mance of instru­men­tal activ­i­ties of dai­ly liv­ing and safer dri­ving per­for­mance.”

Ongoing/ start­ing research