Brain Games to Exercise Your Mind: Protect Your Brain From Memory Loss and Other Age-Related Disorders: 90 Puzzles, Logic Riddles & Brain Teasers
225
Brain Games to Exercise Your Mind: Protect Your Brain From Memory Loss and Other Age-Related Disorders: 90 Puzzles, Logic Riddles & Brain Teasers
225Paperback(Large Print)
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Overview
From New York Times bestselling author Dr. Gary Small – an expert on neuroscience, memory, Alzheimer’s Disease, dementia, anxiety and human behavior – Brain Games to Exercise Your Mind: Protect Your Brain from Memory Loss and Other Age-Related Disorders will keep your mind sharp and in-shape.
Memory loss and age-related dementia illnesses are among the most frightening diagnoses in the US, affecting nearly six million adult Americans.
Dr Small provides over 90 puzzles, logic Riddles and brain teasers to exercise your mind, and have fun while staying sharp.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781630061890 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Humanix Books |
| Publication date: | 08/01/2023 |
| Edition description: | Large Print |
| Pages: | 225 |
| Sales rank: | 360,461 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d) |
About the Author
Named one of the world’s leading innovators in science and technology by Scientific American, he has appeared frequently on Today, Good Morning America, PBS, and CNN and lectures throughout the world. Dr. Small has written over ten books, including The New York Times Bestseller The Memory Bible, as well as The Memory Prescription, The Longevity Bible, The Alzheimer’s Prevention Program, The Other Side of the Couch, The Naked Lady Who Stood on Her Head, iBrain, 2 Weeks to a Younger Brain, SNAP!: Change Your Personality in 30 Days, The Small Guide to Anxiety & The Small Guide to Alzheimer’s Disease.He lives and works in the Los Angeles metro area.
http://drgarysmall.com/
https://www.newsmax.com/health/insiders/dr-small/id-222/
https://w3.mindhealthreport.com/Health/MHR/Offers/MHR-Renewal
Gigi Vorgan, in addition to working as a coauthor with her husband Dr. Gary Small, has written feature films and for television. Vorgan and Dr. Small have written over ten books, including The New York Times Bestseller The Memory Bible, as well as The Memory Prescription, The Longevity Bible, The Alzheimer’s Prevention Program, The Other Side of the Couch, The Naked Lady Who Stood on Her Head, iBrain, 2 Weeks to a Younger Brain, SNAP!: Change Your Personality in 30 Days, The Small Guide to Anxiety & The Small Guide to Alzheimer’s Disease.
http://drgarysmall.com/
https://www.newsmax.com/health/insiders/dr-small/id-222/
https://w3.mindhealthreport.com/Health/MHR/Offers/MHR-Renewal
The author lives & works in the Los Angeles metro area.
Read an Excerpt
Name That Saying
I’ve omitted the vowels and changed the spacing between words in the following sentence. Put your brain power to work and see if you can still recognize the proverb:
RL LNG STNG THRS NM SS
Answer: A Rolling Stone Gathers No Moss
Name That Color
Here’s a brain teaser that will help activate the neural circuits within your brain’s left hemisphere. Rearrange the letters to find the four colors mixed up below. Hint: Only one is a primary color.
EGERN GENRAO TOVEIL EOLWYL
Answer: Green, Orange, Violet, Yellow
Insert Letter
As fast as possible, find one letter to put in front of the following words that will change them into new words:
low room east
Answer: Each of the words becomes a new word if you add the letter “B” at the beginning: blow, broom, beast
Mind (Un)Scramble
See how quickly you can mentally unscramble the letters and make sense of this sentence:
The hmuan mnid has phaoenmneal pweor. Aoccdrnig to rsceearchers, the odrer fo ltteer pmacenlet in a wrod deosn’t mttaer as lnog as the frist and lsat letetrs are in the corerct pclae.
Answer: The human mind has phenomenal power. According to researchers, the order of letter placement in a word doesn’t matter as long as the first and last letters are in the correct place.
Tricky Division
Here’s one that will exercise how well you follow directions.
Divide the number 50 by one-half and then add 20.
Answer: If your answer was 45, then you weren’t following the directions carefully. The correct answer is 120 as shown in the following formula: 50 divided by 0.5 = 100 then 100 + 20 = 120
Matching Socks
You’re up early for work and don’t want to awaken anyone by turning on the lights; however, you need to get a matching pair of socks from your drawer. You know there are 10 black socks and 10 gray socks in the drawer.
How many socks do you need to remove to ensure you have a pair of matching socks?
Answer: You only need to remove three socks to ensure you have a matching pair. If your first sock is black and your second sock is gray, the third will have to make a pair with one of the first two socks.
Word Count
Using the letters below, jot down as many words as you can with three or more letters. Use each letter only once for each word.
A O M E R A
Answer: Here are the words I jotted down. You may have found even more words. AERO, ARE, ARM, ERA, ORE, RAM, REAM, ROAM, MAR, MARE, MER, MORA, MORE, MORAE
Find the Proverb
Figure out the famous proverb from the word jumbles below:
LAL AHTT RGTILEST SI TON ODGL
Answer: All That Glitters is Not Gold
Unpredictable Riddles
Watch out for your usual mental assumptions to answer each of the following questions:
- What moves and has no legs; possesses a bank without any money; and has a mouth but is unable to eat?
- Matthew McConaughey has a long one. Shelley Long has a short one. Cher and the Pope don’t use one. What is it?
Answers:
- A River
- A surname
Mystery Words
Use the following clue to figure out the mystery word. Hint: It’s often associated with a laboratory.
4N6
Now that you’re warmed up, see if you can come up with the question posed by the clue below. Hint: Think of a fun activity for your body and mind health.
10SNE1
Answers:
- Forensics
- Tennis Anyone
Which Door?
See if you can figure out this fun riddle. You are trying to escape a room that has three exit doors. A rattlesnake is waiting for you behind the first door. A trained assassin is poised behind the second door. Behind the third door is a lion that has not eaten in years.
Which door is your safest exit strategy?
Answer: The third door is your best choice. If the lion had not eaten in years, it would no longer be alive.
Who Is That?
This brain teaser may boggle your mind, but if you use simple deductive reasoning you will figure it out. A woman is staring at a photo of someone, and an acquaintance asks her who is in the photo. The woman says, “I have no sisters, but that woman’s mother is my mother’s daughter.”
Who was the woman in the photo?
Answer: Her Daughter.
Table of Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS to Brain Games to Exercise Your Mind: Protect Your Brain from Memory Loss and Other Age-Related Disorders by Dr Gary SmallINTRODUCTION VII
PART 1: BRAIN GAMES 1
PART 2: HEALTH CARE FOR A BETTER BRAIN 187
PART 3: WHAT YOU CAN DO TO PROTECT YOUR BRAIN 197
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES 219
LOWER YOUR ODDS FOR DEMENTIAWITH FOODS THAT FIGHTINFLAMMATION 225
THIS TWO-MINUTE MORNINGACTIVITY WILL BOOST YOURENERGY AND FOCUS ALL DAY 229
ABOUT THE AUTHORS 233
Preface
Most people know that if they engage in regular exercise, their muscles will grow and get stronger. If they commit to an aerobic conditioning routine, their heart health will improve and they will live longer. But many people don’t realize that exercising their minds actually builds brain muscle and helps protect against the decline that often comes with aging.
Accumulating scientific evidence supports the idea that brain workouts — doing puzzles, taking classes, playing games, reading books, or even engaging in stimulating conversations — can lower a person’s risk for age-related cognitive decline. Initial studies supporting this notion included a large epidemiological sample of people in the community in order to determine if people who attended college experienced lower rates of future cognitive decline and dementia, which is defined as a cognitive impairment severe enough to interfere with a person’s independence.
Several years ago, investigators from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, Universityof Cambridge in the UK, and other European research centers reviewed the educational histories of over 17,000 patients with a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s dementia and compared them to those of 37,000 cognitively healthy control subjects without dementia. The research team concluded that higher educational attainment is associated with a reduced risk of getting Alzheimer’s disease. The research team estimated that for each year of educational achievement, the risk for developing Alzheimer's disease was reduced by about 10 percent.
Although those are fairly impressive odds, they still don’t definitively prove that the mental stimulation associated with pursuing a college degree actually protects the brain. Another explanation could be that people with increased formal education are more aware that healthy lifestyle habits, like not smoking, getting regular physical exercise, and staying on top of personal medical needs will protect their brain health.
Other research findings add support to the idea that the old adage, “use it or lose it,” may apply to the brain as well as the body. A study of more than 300 cognitively normal, middle-aged adults enrolled in the Wisconsin Registry for Alzheimer’s Prevention indicated that research volunteers who engaged in more frequent and extensive cognitive activity, including game playing, had larger brain volumes in regions controlling memory and thinking. These volunteers also scored higher on tests of memory, language, and other cognitive skills.
In my own research, I hypothesized that it is possible to observe heightened neural activity in the brain when people engage in cognitively stimulating activities. To test this hypothesis, my research team assessed patterns of brain neural activation in cognitively normal middle-aged and older adults while they performed a simulated online search task during functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanning. We found that volunteers with prior Internet search experience showed a more than two-fold increase in the extent of neural activation compared to those who had never searched online before. We then trained the Internet naïve volunteers on the basics of searching online and instructed them to practice Internet searching for one hour each day for a week. Then we repeated the functional MRI scans while these Internet-trained volunteers performed the simulated search. We found significant increases in neural activity compared with their baseline scans, particularly in the frontal lobe of the brain, the area that controls reasoning and decision-making.
Additional research has shown that computer apps and videogames can train our brains and improve our problem-solving skills, help us focus attention and shorten our reaction time. Some studies have even shown that certain videogames can train working memory and boost problem-solving skills. Working memory, a form of short-term memory, is what temporarily holds information in mind long enough to use it, such as hearing a phone number and then dialing it right away. The research indicates that when you train your working memory, it can translate into an improvement in fluid intelligence — the capacity to think logically and solve problems.
Even though it is difficult to definitively prove that playing games and solving riddles will fortify brain health, brainteasers and puzzles still provide an opportunity for mental fun. The key is to train but not strain the brain, which means it is best to find puzzles that are challenging but not overly difficult. If your brain games are too easy you’ll get bored, but if they are too difficult they may be stressful and cause you to give up on them.
We have lots of options for stimulating our minds ranging from game playing and socializing to traveling, taking classes, learning languages, or completing crosswords or Sudoku puzzles. A helpful strategy is to find stimulating activities that you enjoy and try to “cross-train” your brain. That means alternating a visual spatial puzzle like a jigsaw with a language puzzle like a word scramble. Cross-training the brain adds variety, which keeps our minds interested in the mental activity longer.
Scientists at the Universityof California, San Francisco, performed research on a videogame that required players to steer an animated race car along a winding road while informative and distracting street signs pop up. The researchers found that older adults who played the game for a month, experienced improved multi-tasking skills to the point that they performed at the same level as untrained 20-year-olds. Other studies have shown that surgeons who play video games make fewer errors in the operating room. It is likely that action games that train attention and reaction time also improve surgical skills, so playing certain videogames can be a form of mental exercise that provides practical benefits, whether it’s performing surgery or piloting an airplane.
A form of mental exercise that offers additional practical benefits for middle-aged and older adults involves learning and using memory methods that compensate for everyday forgetfulness. Most memory techniques include three important tasks: focusing attention, visualizing the information that you want to remember, and creating mental associations that link those visual images, making them easier to recall.
The most frequent reason that people are forgetful is that they are not paying attention in the first place. Doing exercises that help focus attention is a great way to start to strengthen your memory skills. Creating mental images of what you want to remember will leverage your brain’s inborn visual abilities, and creating meaningful associations will make the information more memorable. These methods can be used to recall names and faces and items on a to-do list faces, as well as help you to find those keys, glasses and other items that most people commonly misplace.
Keeping our brains healthy and our minds sharp involves more than just mental exercise. Considerable research points to a formula for successful brain aging that incorporates mental exercise along with physical workouts, healthy nutrition, stress management, and social engagement. Each of these lifestyle habits contributes to brain health in a variety of ways.
When it comes to physical exercise, you don’t have to become a triathlete to keep your brain healthy. Prior research suggests that a 20 minute brisk walk each day may lower your risk for dementia. That rapid walk may also lift your mood because it causes your body to produce endorphins, which are natural antidepressants. Workouts also produce brain derived neurotropic factor (BDNF), a protein that gets your brain cells to sprout new branches and communicate more effectively.
Investigators at the Universityof Illinois have demonstrated that regular aerobic conditioning can increase the size of the brain’s memory-forming region and improve attention and reasoning abilities. After six months of regular cardiovascular conditioning, middle-aged and older volunteers were shown to have larger hippocampal memory centers compared to a control group that only did stretching without walking. Hippocampal size increased even more for volunteers who continued their walking routine for an entire year.
Social engagement bolsters brain health in several ways. Dr. Oscar Ybarra and colleagues studied cognitive abilities after a stimulating discussion and found that a 10-minute conversation results in significantly better memory performance and more rapid speed of mental processing compared to watching a sit-com rerun. Conversations are like mental calisthenics that bolster neuronal networks. By engaging in daily discussions on topics of interest, you keep your neural circuits strong. And conversing with an empathic friend may help lower your stress levels, which can first further bolster your brain health.
Learning other ways to effectively manage stress will improve brain health by reducing cortisol levels. This stress hormone has been shown to cause temporary memory impairment after being injected into healthy volunteers. The good news is that such impairment is passing: meditation and other relaxation techniques not only improve mood but also boost cognitive abilities.
Healthy nutrition can protect brain health too. Heightened brain inflammation that accumulates with age can accelerate cognitive decline. However, ingesting omega-3 fatty acids, which are found in fish and nuts, help lower this inflammation. Fresh fruits and vegetables contain antioxidants that can protect brain cells from wear and tear due to age-related oxidative stress. Diabetes can double the risk for getting dementia, and avoiding processed foods and refined sugars will lower a person’s risk for diabetes.
The brain games in this book are an excellent start to help you to create your own regular routine of mental aerobics. For example, in my house we like to start each morning with a stimulating conversation about the day’s news and then knock off a Sudoku puzzle. The conversation exercises brain regions throughout the cortex (out region) that control language and reasoning. The Sudoku puzzle activates the left hemisphere (mathematical skills) and right hemisphere (visual spatial abilities). If we have time after that, we’ll try a crossword, which tweaks brain areas controlling visual spatial abilities and language skills. Add a healthy breakfast following a good night’s sleep, and you are on your way to a brain healthy day.
How much mental stimulation should you engage in each day? That will depend on your lifestyle. If you have an extremely challenging job that requires effortful mental work throughout the day, you may prefer brain games that are more relaxing and not concern yourself so much with building brain muscle. If your job is more mundane and less mentally challenging, you may wish to push harder on your brain games. The scientific evidence is clear that these non-genetic, lifestyle factors have a significant impact on brain health as we age. And, whatever mental exercise routine you adopt, try to make it a habit. For healthy lifestyle choices to have an effect, we need to engage in them on a regular basis for the long haul.
Remember, our minds crave variety, so be sure to change things up if you find that your brain games routine is becoming too rote. Keep challenging yourself to achieve more to further expand your mental horizons and. And most of all, have fun with your mental exercise as you strengthen your memory and fortify your brain cells.
