Read “Applying Psychology to Everyday Life: Mental and Physical Exercises Combin
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Read “Applying Psychology to Everyday Life: Mental and Physical Exercises Combine for Better Cognitive Health”
Applying Psychology to Everyday Life: Mental and Physical Exercises for Better Cognitive Health
7.15Identify some methods for improving your cognitive health.
You may have heard the saying “use it or lose it” and likely think of it in terms of maintaining physical fitness. But it is not limited to that; in many regards, the saying applies as well to our ability to maintain cognitive fitness. However, just as there is a difference between physical activity and physical exercise, there is a difference in mental activity and mental exercise.
Quite a few computerized brain-training programs and devices have hit the market in the last few years. In addition, a lot of attention in the media has focused on the benefits of specific computer-based brain exercises you can do to improve your cognitive fitness. While some are more scientifically grounded and offer the possibility of real benefits, many more appear to be riding the current wave of interest and may not be useful. For some individuals, practicing certain mental skills through cognitive exercises appears to help with those same skills when tested later. In general, however, research has not identified any benefits that transfer to untrained areas (A. M. Owen et al., 2010). Just as being physically active in general will not make you an Olympic athlete, to tune up your cognitive fitness you may have to perform proper, focused cognitive exercises.
Wait a minute! You just said most skills don’t transfer.
That’s correct, some do not, but just as in physical training, if you select the proper foundational exercises, you may be able to improve some higher-level cognitive functions. In one study, it was found that for a group of individuals with schizophrenia, computerized cognitive exercises that placed increasing demands on auditory perception (a foundational skill) were beneficial (M. Fisher et al., 2009). Those same individuals later demonstrated significant progress in verbal working memory and global cognition tasks (higher-level skills). Although the cognitive exercise group originally received daily training for 10 weeks, when some participants were studied 6 months later, the researchers found that some of the gains were still evident and that gains overall were positively correlated with improved quality of life at the 6-month assessment point (Fisher et al., 2009). However, a more recent study has suggested that computerized attention, memory, and executive training for individuals with schizophrenia may improve performance on training tasks, but these improvements do not transfer to other measures or real-life situations (Gomar et al., 2015).
Question: Aside from those involving working memory, what other kinds of focused mental exercises might help keep the brain fit?
Explanation / Answer
To all together ask for a focused mental exercise that does not involve working memory is a questionable proposition since almost all of the focused mental activities involve working memory. But considering any activity which is not primarily designed to involve working memory that can improve mental fitness, one may propose meditation which has found to improve cognitive skills . Meditation keeps a blank mental background either through repetitive mental activities which does not require delibrate information processing or through minimizing mental activities. This allows time for the brain to clear away the information processing backlog(all though it is done during sound sleep) , solving mental conflicts etc. Involving in multi tasking improves brain functioning through the demands it pose. But working memory is certaintly involved in it . One activity which does not involve much of working memory is automated skills and activities (acquired after sufficient practice). So involving in such a physical activity like jogging, skipping etc provides the physical benefits as well as improves mental acuity (also play activities) . Another mental activity to keep the cognitive fitness is to avoid boredom associated with mundane activities and give brain adequate dose of novel activities. This could be just taking a different route back home or going through a different (map) location.
For those suffering from hallucinations as in the case of schizophrenic, meditation is not to be prescribed. To overcome the auditory hallucination they may be advised to follow simple exercises like humming. For maintintaing mental acuity they may be asked to name those objects in their sight (which is more of a retrieval excercise involving long term memory).
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