If we want to enjoy a healthy life, we need an active brain. Turning years means losing some faculties. As we get older it becomes difficult for us to memorize phone numbers and sometimes we resist that precise word we want to say. Memory, attention and the ability to focus or express ourselves are some of the skills that are affected over time. However, there is good news. In recent decades, neuroscience is showing that everyone, at any age, can do cognitive training that helps us keep our gray matter younger. Summer is a good time to start, especially after such a hard time as we have lived. A good training is recommended to recover mental energy and, even more importantly, to reinforce our cognitive abilities.
Before proposing an exercise agenda, let's make a small qualification. Therapist Catalina Hoffmann, a great expert in cognitive development and author of the method that bears her name, argues that training is different from performing mental maintenance. If we carry out daily activities that we like, such as doing sudokus or letter soups, for example, we would be maintaining the areas of our brain that are healthy and active. It would be equivalent to exercising every day for someone who likes physical exercise. However, training is developing healthy brain areas that are not active and that we have parked for various reasons: because we have not paid as much attention to them, because they frustrated us or because the activities they involved did not motivate us.
Hoffmann acknowledges that training involves "waking up our Netflix neurons," who are comfortably seated on their couch and have no need to move. That is where our challenge begins. When mind coaches are consulted on their tricks, they list simple activities, which can be practiced daily and do not require more than 10 minutes a day. Let's see eight of them, which arise from the recommendations that Hoffmann herself collects in her method, but also from books such as Train your brain, by Marta Romo; Superpowers of success for normal people, by Mago More, and Super mental tricks for daily life, by Jorge Luengo. These are her proposals.
Listen to 8D music with headphones. This type of music is often used in movies or video games and is especially immersive because it activates the brain as a whole, according to Hoffmann. It can be found on the Internet and it is recommended to listen to it with your eyes closed while paying attention to the instruments, the voice, the rhythm ...
Non-dominant hand day. One day a week you have to do everything by hand that you don't normally use. If we are right-handed, we become left-handed, or vice versa. This activity facilitates a crossing of the cerebral hemispheres and increases the cognitive reserve.
Read out loud. When we read aloud we open new neural routes, so it is recommended to practice it once a week even if we are alone.
Do something that makes us uncomfortable. We have to avoid falling into the comfort zone, especially in summer, which is a period where we tend to relax more. Mago More suggests doing things that cost us, even if they are small acts, such as not having a dessert that we really want or going down a different path than usual.
Work with smells. Hoffmann suggests placing familiar scents in containers, such as a childhood soap, an old perfume ... Exercise consists of blindfolding and being surprised by smell. In this way, we activate one of the less developed senses and open new neural connections. This dynamic can also be done with flavors, if someone has difficulty with smell.
Play sports or play. As Marta Romo recognizes, sport also activates our brain, and even helps us develop new neurons. When the body moves, in addition, the mind relaxes and creates an ideal space for learning.
Eye-manual coordination. One of the keys to cognitive training is to cross different brain areas. In this case, Hoffmann suggests getting us some plasticine or some material that allows it to be molded, to create different shapes. The goal is to connect the eyes with the activities of the hands.
Challenge attention. There are books and dynamics to find differences between two images or find one that is hidden. This exercise helps train attention. Jorge Luengo, known illusionist, suggests practicing it day by day, when we are sitting or waiting in line in the street. The challenge is very easy: we observe what the people around us are wearing, we close our eyes and try to remember the details of their shoes, the clothes they wear ...
Training our brains to create different habits and developing our full cognitive potential is in our hands. And summer is undoubtedly an excellent time to propose it. —Eps
Pilar Jericó is coordinator of the EL PAÍS Happiness Laboratory blog.