5 Brain Health Exercises to Avoid Cognitive Decline, Improve Perceptual Motor Skills As You Age

One's cognitive function tends to decline as they age. However, you can do something to avoid it.

Brain Health Exercises For Cognitive Function

If you want to be mentally sound despite your age, there are ways to do so. Sandra Bond Chapman, a professor in brain sciences and founder and chief director of the Center for BrainHealth at the University of Texas at Dallas, spoke about the major misconceptions about brain health.

"Brain health is more than the absence of brain issues. Brain health is the continual promotion of optimal brain development, cognition, well-being, and connectedness across the life span," Chapman said.

Per Chapman, according to science, the way we utilize our brains constantly modifies their structural and functional makeup. Just as physical training improves certain muscle areas in our bodies, brain training explicitly refers to exercises to improve certain cognitive and perceptual motor skills via repeated repetition.

Here are some tips from Chapman to avoid cognitive decline.

1. Reframe a personal situation

When something doesn't go as planned, practice reframing the circumstance to create other options for trying again. This makes you a more agile thinker than a brooder who gets mired in the mud.

2. Determine your priorities

Use your brain's prime time- when you're most alert and invigorated- to complete things that demand more profound thought rather than wasting it on urgent but unimportant tasks. This is an innovative way to tackle to-do lists.

3. Be open to new viewpoints

Develop a curious mind and consider diverse perspectives to enhance your adaptable thinking, transparency, and sense of unity.

4. Conquer new skills

Thinking and learning prompt the brain to thrive. Develop new interests or talents to the fullest while avoiding overstretching your mental faculties in too many directions.

5. Nourish connections

Strong social ties are beneficial to brain function. Make meaningful interactions an investment (quality above quantity) and discover new facets of human uniqueness. This fosters partnerships and broadens your mental horizons.

Exercise To Sharpen Memory

Boris Konrad, who owns multiple Guinness World Records for memory and is a neurologist and World Memory Champion, talked about how he maintains his memories. Here are some tips from Konrad to improve your memory.

Mnemonic

The memory palace method, popularized by Sherlock Holmes, maps out a familiar location in your mind. You pinpoint specific turning places along the route, attributing a single fact to each.

It's time to revisit your memory palace and reinforce each association after you've assigned your important destinations. The more times you engage in this technique, the stronger these associations will become.

Short Mindfulness Exercises

Konrad engages in mindfulness exercises in addition to pattern-based workouts. As a result, he needs several minutes to process what he just read or observed. This might be as easy as stopping for five minutes on his way to work to engage all five senses in nature observation.

He also discusses the advantages of retrieval practice by summarizing an article or a book section that he thought was important to remember for a minute or two after reading without looking up the text. He uses the same conscious technique following a meeting, phone call, or video conference.

Check out more news and information on Medicine & Health in Science Times.