cognitive improvements

Do Crossword Puzzles Help to Counteract the Aging Process? If so, Which Ones and How?

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Recent­ly there has been an ongo­ing debate as to whether attempt­ing cross­words reg­u­lar­ly can stave off cog­ni­tive decline, which is the hall­mark of healthy aging and demen­tia. As with many areas of psy­chol­o­gy the answer to this ques­tion may not be as clear-cut as one would hope. Before con­sid­er­ing the evi­dence for whether cross­word par­tic­i­pa­tion can reduce cog­ni­tive decline in lat­er life, it is nec­es­sary to con­sid­er the dif­fer­ent types of cross­words avail­able and under­stand whether one or anoth­er type may be more cog­ni­tive­ly stim­u­lat­ing than the oth­er. Gen­er­al­ly, when we think of cross­words two kinds spring to mind, either gen­er­al knowl­edge or cryp­tic crosswords.

A gen­er­al knowl­edge cross­word typ­i­cal­ly has clues which are sim­i­lar to answer­ing gen­er­al knowl­edge quizzes, but the solver has the ben­e­fit of know­ing how many let­ters make up the solution.

For exam­ple: “the cap­i­tal of Peru (4)”… [Read more…] about Do Cross­word Puz­zles Help to Coun­ter­act the Aging Process? If so, Which Ones and How?

What is Brain Fitness? How to Enhance Brain Fitness?

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We define Brain Fit­ness as hav­ing the brain-based cog­ni­tive, emo­tion­al and self-reg­u­la­tion capac­i­ties required to suc­ceed in one’s envi­ron­ment. Not every­one is exposed to the same men­tal demands nor do we all have the same start­ing points. This means we need to stop look­ing for ‘mag­ic pills’ and invest more resources in devel­op­ing toolk­its and infra­struc­ture sim­i­lar to what the phys­i­cal fit­ness indus­try has done over the last 30–40 years.

The fol­low­ing ques­tion guides much of our work at Sharp­Brains: “What tools pro­vide the right kind of expe­ri­ence to refine our brains from a struc­tur­al and func­tion­al point of view to har­ness neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty into real-world ben­e­fits?” We try to pro­vide good infor­ma­tion and answers by con­stant­ly mon­i­tor­ing and ana­lyz­ing the state of sci­ence and the marketplace—and by shar­ing these analy­ses via appro­pri­ate plat­forms with orga­ni­za­tions and indi­vid­u­als. Sharp­Brains doesn’t sell, devel­op or endorse prod­ucts in order to avoid con­flicts of interest.

The main con­text for brain fit­ness is this: [Read more…] about What is Brain Fit­ness? How to Enhance Brain Fitness?