“Masterpieces” and other developmental exercises, rules for training attention and memory

Mem­o­ry is capa­ble of stor­ing infor­ma­tion for quite a long time. Ade­quate sleep, prop­er nutri­tion and reg­u­lar phys­i­cal activ­i­ty have a good effect on brain func­tion. But bad habits, cer­tain med­ica­tions and depres­sion reduce brain activ­i­ty. Bad mem­o­ry needs to be trained — devel­op­ing it even in a play­ful way, you can achieve high per­for­mance. And the fun of the game makes it eas­i­er to learn.

The brain needs to be chal­lenged dai­ly. You need to start brain train­ing with sim­ple games. Over time, exer­cis­es for the mind should become more dif­fi­cult. Able to improve long-term and short-term types of mem­o­ry solv­ing puz­zles, sudoku, cross­word puz­zles and rebus­es. Peo­ple who do log­ic exer­cis­es on a reg­u­lar basis gen­er­ate ideas faster and bet­ter. Mem­o­ry can be trained in oth­er ways.

The effec­tive­ness of par­tic­i­pa­tion in team games has been proven. The deci­sions made by the team were more accu­rate and faster. Sci­en­tists attribute this to the fact that when com­mu­ni­cat­ing, infor­ma­tion is eas­i­er to per­ceive and remem­ber. Intel­lec­tu­al board games: chess, backgam­mon, check­ers form a pay­load for the par­tic­i­pants’ work­ing mem­o­ry. As an exam­ple, we can cite the case when work­ing mem­o­ry fails, if when approach­ing a store a per­son remem­bers what he is going to buy, but when he goes inside, he for­gets.

Accord­ing to Japan­ese sci­en­tists, the best way to keep the brain in good shape is to ver­bal­ly count back­wards. For exam­ple, count from 300 to 1. Or count­down the same num­ber: 500, 495, 490, and so on. Such active involve­ment of work­ing or short-term mem­o­ry will allow you to learn how to keep cur­rent infor­ma­tion in mem­o­ry.

Here is anoth­er small part of effec­tive mem­o­ry devel­op­ment tech­niques.

• Word games are the eas­i­est way to keep your brain toned. Think of words for each let­ter of the alpha­bet or for the last let­ter of the word spo­ken by the oppo­nent. Thus, access to almost for­got­ten infor­ma­tion is resumed, cel­lu­lar neur­al con­nec­tions are re-acti­vat­ed, a larg­er num­ber of which in the brain improves the qual­i­ty of life.
• The game “Asso­ci­a­tions” stim­u­lates the brain if you need to remem­ber some­thing new. You just need to cor­re­late this, find­ing an asso­cia­tive con­nec­tion, with some already known fact, call­ing on your imag­i­na­tion to help. It is clear that it is nec­es­sary to select not any, but the clos­est and most inter­est­ing asso­ci­a­tions to the top­ic. For exam­ple, if you need to remem­ber a list of prod­ucts that you should buy, then it would be bet­ter to asso­ciate them with dish­es pre­pared from these prod­ucts.
• Com­put­er gamesinter­ac­tive video games and online sim­u­la­tors, vary­ing in dif­fi­cul­ty, are very com­mon on the Web.

Here are some exam­ples of pop­u­lar online games.

On the play­ing field, pho­tos of world paint­ings appear in a cer­tain sequence. You need to restore the mas­ter­pieces in a new win­dow in the same order.

Prod­ucts appear­ing alter­nate­ly on the table change their loca­tion each time. The play­er needs to quick­ly click on a new prod­uct.

Old­er peo­ple should avoid rou­tine activ­i­ties that lead to automa­tism in behav­ior that does not leave mem­o­ry a chance to be in work­ing order. If you know almost all the answers in the game, then such a game as a brain train­ing does not make sense. Thus, work on one’s mem­o­ry is expressed in the appli­ca­tion of tech­niques with ever-increas­ing com­plex­i­ty. With­out this, effec­tive results can­not be achieved.

Games for the devel­op­ment of atten­tion and mem­o­ry in adults dif­fer in their pur­pose for devel­op­ing mem­o­ry, atten­tion, speed of think­ing and men­tal flex­i­bil­i­ty. Mem­o­ry can­not be improved with­out devel­op­ing atten­tion — the process of brain activ­i­ty, the abil­i­ty to con­cen­trate on some­thing. At the same time, it is required to improve obser­va­tion and train visu­al mem­o­ry. Exer­cis­es such as “Find the Dif­fer­ences” help a lot with this. The focus on details is very impor­tant in this process. You can, for exam­ple, walk down the street and try to find things on a cer­tain basis, such as win­dows with pink cur­tains.

Games should be cho­sen with a spe­cial focus for train­ing dif­fer­ent types of mem­o­ry:

• long-term;
• short-term;
• oper­a­tional;
• visu­al;
• ver­bal-log­i­cal;
• asso­cia­tive and oth­ers.

It is nec­es­sary to apply an indi­vid­ual approach to the train­ing of each of its types. Devel­op­ing, for exam­ple, asso­cia­tive mem­o­ry, you can write def­i­n­i­tions for words. Describe what the weath­er might be like. For exam­ple, it can be warm, cold, windy, clear, rainy, frosty. The main thing is not to repeat def­i­n­i­tions.

Games for the devel­op­ment of visu­al mem­o­ry will help you learn to notice and retain details in your mem­o­ry. Exam­ple: task with match­es. Throw a few pieces on the table, remem­ber the result­ing fig­ure and, turn­ing away, try to repro­duce it with oth­er match­es in the same amount. And eval­u­ate their sim­i­lar­i­ty. In the future, it is nec­es­sary to increase the com­plex­i­ty of the exer­cise, increas­ing the num­ber of match­es. By choos­ing the appro­pri­ate set of exer­cis­es, it is pos­si­ble to train all types of mem­o­ry that need improve­ment.

Cur­rent­ly, web­site devel­op­ers offer users train­ing cours­es to keep the brain active and pre­vent demen­tia. Any user can take part in an indi­vid­ual train­ing pro­gram, self-select­ed train­ing. Or the sys­tem, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly test­ed a person’s abil­i­ties, will choose an online course for him with about 15-minute dai­ly exer­cis­es.

Ser­vices devel­oped Lumos­i­ty, Wik­i­um, Neu­rona­tion, include games with 4 types of train­ing: for the devel­op­ment of log­ic, mem­o­ry, think­ing and atten­tion. These sites have devel­oped cog­ni­tive train­ers that train think­ing, so that strengths become a sup­port for train­ing weak­er ones. Games for 10–20 min­utes every day increase men­tal tone.

On the web­sites of Hap­py­mozg, “Mnemon­ics. Ru”, Brain­scale, you can find many inter­est­ing sim­u­la­tors that improve both long-term and cur­rent mem­o­riza­tion skills, as well as a use­ful course for train­ing RAM. The pro­gram mon­i­tors the result and clear­ly mon­i­tors so that there are no exer­cis­es of the same type. This makes the game much more inter­est­ing to play.

By the age of 30, all peo­ple should train their mem­o­ry. It is after this age that it begins to dete­ri­o­rate. Cur­rent­ly, online mem­o­ry train­ing is the most pop­u­lar. They have an advan­tage over tra­di­tion­al forms in their greater diver­si­ty and the abil­i­ty to visu­al­ly see the results. Adults, among oth­er things, have access to indi­vid­ual coach­ing via Skype, webi­na­rs and video cours­es.

How­ev­er, the opin­ions of sci­en­tists about the ben­e­fits of an online game form of train­ing brain activ­i­ty are divid­ed. Many experts do not agree to rec­og­nize the meth­ods as effec­tive and believe that they are more enter­tain­ing than devel­op­ing. That’s why more pro­duc­tive are exer­cise and med­i­ta­tion, play­ing musi­cal instru­ments and hob­bies.