how to improve and develop abilities? How to train the brain and improve memory? Example tasks for training

A mature per­son needs to keep their cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties and mem­o­ry in good shape. If you notice that it has become dif­fi­cult for you to cope with intel­lec­tu­al tasks and mem­o­rize new infor­ma­tion, then you should devote more time to brain gym­nas­tics.

Study­ing at school or uni­ver­si­ty, a per­son learns a huge amount of pre­vi­ous­ly unknown mate­r­i­al. This allows the brain to work inten­sive­ly. Over the years, the flex­i­bil­i­ty of the mind weak­ens due to the sub­jec­t’s habit of think­ing in the same way, so it is impor­tant for an adult to reg­u­lar­ly train mem­o­ry.

The high­er the activ­i­ty of men­tal activ­i­ty, the more oxy­genat­ed blood enters the brain.

Solv­ing prob­lems in non-stan­dard ways helps to per­fect­ly train the brain, main­tain intel­li­gence and devel­op mem­o­ry after 40 years. Any new activ­i­ties con­tribute to the restruc­tur­ing of think­ing, allow you to main­tain brain func­tions in work­ing con­di­tion.

There is a pro­duc­tive exer­cise that improves the men­tal activ­i­ty of a per­son. Fin­ger gym­nas­tics is aimed at syn­chro­niz­ing the two hemi­spheres of the brain.

• Rub your hands well, as if thor­ough­ly rins­ing very dirty palms. Alter­nate­ly, with the pad of your thumb, touch the tips of all fin­gers of the same hand in the for­ward and reverse direc­tion.
• Stick out the fin­gers of both hands. The thumb of each hand should touch the lit­tle fin­ger locat­ed on the oth­er hand. Then the thumbs smooth­ly pass first to the ring fin­gers, then to the mid­dle ones, then to the index fin­gers of the oth­er hand. Fur­ther actions are repeat­ed in reverse order.
• With your left hand, grasp the tip of your right ear, and with your right hand, grasp the lobe of your left ear. In this state, you need to do at least 20 squats.

There are also use­ful exer­cis­es that even­ly dis­trib­ute ener­gy between both hemi­spheres of the brain.

• Study care­ful­ly for one and a half min­utes a list of 20 words. Dur­ing this peri­od of time, break the word forms into pairs and link them using asso­cia­tive series. Then try to write down all the con­cepts in order on a piece of paper. If you mem­o­rize 15 to 20 words, then your mem­o­ry works great. Repro­duc­tion of 10–14 words indi­cates an aver­age lev­el of mem­o­riza­tion. When restor­ing less than 10 words in mem­o­ry, it is urgent to begin work to improve brain activ­i­ty.

• Gym­nas­tics for the brain “Col­ored words” allows you to improve con­cen­tra­tion. You need to quick­ly pro­nounce the col­or of the word aloud, while it means one col­or, but has a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent col­or. For exam­ple, the word “blue” is writ­ten in red, and “yel­low” is writ­ten in green. It’s con­fus­ing. For this rea­son, there is a need to focus. Both hemi­spheres are includ­ed in the work.

The right side of the brain is respon­si­ble for emo­tions, imag­i­na­tion, deci­pher­ing var­i­ous metaphors, face recog­ni­tion, pro­cess­ing non-ver­bal infor­ma­tion, musi­cal and artis­tic abil­i­ties, and ori­en­ta­tion in space. You can devel­op this hemi­sphere with the help of some exer­cis­es.

• One hand shows a fig­ure of three fin­gers, the oth­er hand shows a sign of approval. Then quick­ly open your hands and clap your hands. Show the shapes with dif­fer­ent hands. Again there is a clap in the palm of the hand, and the fig­urine with the sign of approval is reversed. Repeat gym­nas­tics sev­er­al times.

• Mir­ror­ing the same shapes with both hands at once is very effec­tive. Ini­tial­ly, you should start with the image of squares, tri­an­gles, cir­cles, loops. Over time, the task becomes more dif­fi­cult. Both hands simul­ta­ne­ous­ly draw full-fledged pic­tures.

Class­es for the devel­op­ment of log­i­cal think­ing are aimed at main­tain­ing the work of the left hemi­sphere. This part of the brain per­forms the func­tions respon­si­ble for the lan­guage and speech of a per­son, the con­sis­tent pro­cess­ing of all incom­ing data in the brain struc­tures. Thanks to the left hemi­sphere, the sub­ject can under­stand words, ana­lyze, and per­form math­e­mat­i­cal oper­a­tions. You can train it by solv­ing math­e­mat­i­cal prob­lems, solv­ing puz­zles and cross­word puz­zles, var­i­ous log­ic games, check­ers and chess.

Reg­u­lar per­for­mance of the same type of tasks leads to the fact that it becomes dif­fi­cult for the sub­ject to focus on new infor­ma­tion. Amer­i­can neu­ro­sci­en­tist Lawrence Katz has devel­oped an inter­est­ing exer­cise for the mind, dur­ing which 5 sens­es are active.

The essence of neu­ro­science is that habit­u­al actions are per­formed in an orig­i­nal way. Unac­cus­tomed activ­i­ty, fresh sen­sa­tions con­tribute to the emer­gence of new neur­al con­nec­tions that devel­op intel­lec­tu­al abil­i­ties.

It would be good for a right-han­der to start writ­ing, brush­ing his teeth, comb­ing his hair or hold­ing a spoon with his left hand and, con­verse­ly, for a left-han­der with his right hand. Change the pace of your usu­al activ­i­ties. If you are used to doing every­thing quick­ly, slow down your actions, and, con­verse­ly, if you are a slow per­son, then speed up the pace. It is pro­posed to walk around the apart­ment blind­ly, to deter­mine the object by touch. Try to rec­og­nize the denom­i­na­tion of a coin only by touch­ing your fin­gers.

When read­ing, focus on head­ings and arti­cles that did not inter­est you before. Try to answer non-stan­dard ques­tions. Watch some TV show with­out sound and try to under­stand what the char­ac­ters are talk­ing about.

Breathe in var­i­ous aro­mas, enjoy the smells of food, plants and per­fumes. Smell your smart­phone or note­book. Don’t be afraid to dras­ti­cal­ly change your image. Choose oth­er routes to arrive at your usu­al places: retail out­lets, a sports club, a beau­ty salon, a car ser­vice, or to work.

Var­i­ous tasks improve the flex­i­bil­i­ty of the mind. Quick­ly count from 100 to 1. Now count back in triplets: 100, 97, 94, 91… Per­form sim­ple arith­metic oper­a­tions in your mind: add, sub­tract and mul­ti­ply.

You can improve your thought process­es by invent­ing a word for each let­ter of the alpha­bet. For this pur­pose, half-for­got­ten words have to be retrieved from mem­o­ry. At such moments, con­nec­tions between neu­rons that have not been involved for a long time are acti­vat­ed.

Give your­self dif­fer­ent tasks every day. For exam­ple, set your­self the task: “Today I pay atten­tion to all yel­low objects all day.” Such an atti­tude directs atten­tion to the selec­tion and reten­tion of infor­ma­tion. The selec­tion func­tion is trained. Pay atten­tion to the num­bers of cars pass­ing by you.

The game of chess involves the brain in vio­lent men­tal activ­i­ty, since you need to men­tal­ly cal­cu­late in advance not only your own moves, but also the moves of your oppo­nent. Think­ing through the strat­e­gy of inter­ac­tion with an oppo­nent resem­bles a mod­el of the dai­ly exis­tence of a per­son.

Lis­ten care­ful­ly to your inter­locu­tor. Try to remem­ber the col­or of his clothes, eyes, hair and the tim­bre of his voice. After part­ing with him, try to repro­duce in your mem­o­ry the fea­tures of the face, the col­ors of things. Think of the fra­grance of the per­fume this per­son wears. Men­tal­ly repro­duce the tim­bre of his voice

Visu­al­ize the items you need to remem­ber. For exam­ple, dur­ing a trip to the store, cor­re­late each item of the nec­es­sary pur­chase with a part of your body. Imag­ine a gar­land of sausages around your neck, a stand­ing jar of toma­to paste on your head, a tube of mus­tard on your shoul­der, and a gigan­tic onion in your hand.

To main­tain the flex­i­bil­i­ty of the mind, it is nec­es­sary to pay due atten­tion to phys­i­cal activ­i­ty, good sleep, eat­ing healthy food, walk­ing in the fresh air.

A good blood sup­ply is nec­es­sary for men­tal activ­i­ty, oth­er­wise the brain does not receive the nec­es­sary nutri­tion.

Try not to over­work. Main­tain­ing a healthy lifestyle con­tributes to the preser­va­tion of men­tal activ­i­ty for many years.

Learn a new sport or a musi­cal instru­ment. Learn­ing a com­plex activ­i­ty has a pos­i­tive effect on cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties.

Dur­ing class­es, change the envi­ron­ment: take an unusu­al posi­tion for you or turn on the music. Attend var­i­ous cours­es. For exam­ple, a cook­ing les­son stim­u­lates men­tal work and devel­ops sense of smell, taste and vision.

Draw a map after vis­it­ing a new place. From mem­o­ry, draw your and the neigh­bor­ing dis­trict of the city. Ana­lyze every pass­ing day in great detail. Try to remem­ber all the events of the day before going to bed. Men­tal­ly repro­duce the phras­es you heard, the ges­tures of peo­ple you saw, and oth­er impres­sions.

The fol­low­ing video demon­strates exer­cis­es for brain devel­op­ment.