5 Daily Brain Exercises

Many men are devoted to exercise to bulk up their bodies, but the phrase use it or lose it applies to more than just the muscles in our bodies -- it also applies to the neural pathways and connections in our brains. There are a variety of exercises and activities that can successfully work each of the brains five major cognitive functions on a daily basis. In addition to the tasks you can perform daily, you can also train your brain with HAPPYneuron online brain games and a personalized brain fitness program. Our minds consist of five main cognitive functions:

memory, attention, language, visual-spatial skills, and executive function.

Its important to challenge, stimulate and effectively exercise all five areas to stay mentally sharp as our brains age. Here are 5 daily brain exercises that can help you do this.

1- Memory
Memory plays a crucial role in all cognitive activities, including reading, reasoning and mental calculation. There are several types of memory at work in the brain. Taken together, these are the cognitive skills we may notice most when they begin to fail. To maintain a good memory, you need to train for it, which can be easier than you think. Listening to music is not only enjoyable, but by choosing a song you dont know and memorizing the lyrics, you boost the level of acetylcholine, the chemical that helps build your brain, and improve your memory skills. Challenge yourself even more by showering or getting dressed in the dark or using your opposite hand to brush your teeth. These challenges help build new associations between different neural connections of the brain.

2- Attention
Attention is necessary in nearly all daily tasks. Good attention enables you to maintain concentration despite noise and distractions and to focus on several activities at once. We can improve our attention by simply changing our routines. Change your route to work or reorganize your desk -- both will force your brain to wake up from habits and pay attention again. As we age, our attention span can decrease, making us more susceptible to distraction and less efficient

at multitasking. By combining activities like listening to an audio book with jogging or doing math in your head while you drive forces your brain to work at doing more in the same amount of time

3- Language
Language activities will challenge our ability to recognize, remember and understand words. They also exercise our fluency, grammatical skills and vocabulary. With regular practice, you can expand your knowledge of new words and much more easily retrieve words that are familiar. For example, if you usually only thoroughly read the sports section, try reading a few in-depth business articles. Youll be exposed to new words, which are easier to understand when read in context or easier to look up on a dictionary site if you are reading the news online. Take time to understand the word in its context, which will help you build your language skills and retrieve the word more readily in front of your boss in the future.

4- Visual-Spatial
We live in a colorful, three-dimensional world. Analyzing visual information is necessary to be able to act within your environment. To work this cognitive function, try walking into a room and picking out five items and their locations. When you exit the room, try to recall all five items and where they were located. Too easy? Wait two hours and try to remember those items and their locations. The next time youre waiting on your coworker or friend to arrive, try this mental exercise. Look straight ahead and note everything you can see both in front of you and in your peripheral vision. Challenge yourself to recall everything and write it down. This will force you to use your memory and train your brain to focus on your surroundings.

5- Executive Function
Without even realizing it, you use your logic and reasoning skills on a daily basis to make decisions, build up hypotheses and consider the possible consequences of your actions. Activities in which you must define a strategy to reach a desired outcome and calculate the right moves to reach the solution in the shortest possible time are actually fun activities you do daily -- like social interaction and, yes, video games. Engaging in a brief visit with a friend boosts your intellectual performance by requiring you to consider possible responses and desired outcomes. Video games require strategy and problem-solving to reach a desired outcome -- like making it to the final level. Its not just Halo, honey; Im exercising my executive brain functions!

cerebral workout

As we age, its important to flex our mental muscles as well as our physiques. Now that youre aware of the five main cognitive functions and how to exercise them, it will be easy to find daily activities that will help you break a mental sweat and keep your brain in shape. If you need a little structured help, HAPPYneuron has fun and challenging games to work the brain in all five areas, as well as a virtual coach to serve as a personal trainer and ensure you get the most optimal brain workout for you. Neurologist & neuropsychologist Dr. Bernard Croisile, author of Dental Floss for the Mind, Get your Brain in the Fast Lane and Broccoli for the Brain, as well a developer of HAPPYneuron online brain fitness program, fills you in how the brains five major cognitive functions are affected by various types of activities.

How To Increase Your Intelligence and Get Smarter A new study by Utrecht University finds that speeding up the brain's network may increase intelligence. In the multi-billion dollar herbal supplement market, many claims have been made that the following supplements speed up brain waves:

Essential fatty acids in general Omega 3 fatty acids (As one article says: "Recall that your brain is comprised of at least 60% fat and the fatty or lipid part of your brain helps to transmit information rapidly across your neural networks".) Phosphatidylserine, commonly known by the initials "PS" DHA

And certain types of music - such as certain selections of Mozart - allegedly can speed up your brain waves But the Utrecht study doesn't just say speed of brain waive propagation is important: A new study has finally solved the decade-old mystery about where exactly intelligence lies in human brains after scientists found that it's everywhere. A team at Utrecht University has found that the most efficiently wired brains belong to the most intelligent people -- a finding that suggests that improving this efficiency with drugs could offer a tantalising means of boosting IQ. According to lead scientist Martijn van den Heuvel, "The concept of a networked brain isn't so different from the transportation grids used by cars and planes.

In other words, it is efficiency in the brain's connectivity which may be the key. Scientists have also discovered that the Dasm1 protein plays an important part in neural connectivity: Researchers have discovered a critical protein that regulates the growth and activation of neural connections in the brain. The protein functions in the developing brain, where it controls the sprouting of new connections and stimulates otherwise silent connections among immature neurons, and potentially in the mature brain as well, where it may play a role in memory formation. And as Kenneth Wesson writes: Greater brain stimulation promotes an increase in the number of dendrites ("little trees") connecting the billions of cells in the brain. Neurons sprout and re-sprout new dendrites connecting more and more brain cells throughout one's life giving all of us the neurophysiological wherewithal to learn throughout our entire lifetime. Multisensory experiences further extend these plentiful and precious connections throughout the entire cerebral cortex and they form additional links with other sub-cortical structures inside the brain. Conversely, reducing the quantity and/or quality of experiences and learning opportunities diminishes the brain's neural pathways permanently decreasing one's ability to learn. However, the human brain is capable of creating trillions of interrelated neural networks rendering our capacity to learn virtually limitless, if the proper foundations are laid early in life during the critical periods of the developing brain. New neural connections are created as a result of incoming information from at least 19 sensory systems (there are not just five senses)... While the "power" of a brain can increase in direct relationship to the number of cells composing it, the human brain's capability is best calibrated by the number of connections that develop among its billions of brain cells. Neurons are constantly rearranging their 500 trillionplus connections (via the dendrites) in response to new information and experiences. UCLA's Arnold Scheibel stated that, "Only when the neuron develops these extensions from itself, does it begin to significantly increase its surface area as a total unit and provide more and more of a landing field' for other incoming neural messages" coming in from active healthy neurons... Music at sixty beats per minute (Baroque music, Mozart, Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, and others) helps to lower blood pressure and aids in relaxing the body's large muscle groups, which allows for a greater amount of blood flow and blood utilization in the human brain. Although the brain is only 2% of the body's weight, it consumes over 20% of the body's energy, nutrients, and oxygen. Reducing this vital supply of nutrients and energy to the brain limit its ability to function at its optimal levels. The brain requires an excessively large and disproportionate amount of our blood supply. Unlike other organs and muscles, it cannot store energy. Consequently, a pint and a half or blood must flow through the carotid artery (in the neck) and into the brain single every minute.

You can also play games to increase your brain function (see this, for example). Exercise also helps keep your brain You can also play games to increase your brain function (see this, for example). Moreover, relaxing activities like meditation and prayer have been shown to increase brain mass and connectivity in certain areas of the brain. On the other hand, high levels of cortisol - the chemical released by the body when one is under continuous, unrelenting stress - and poverty can physically impair the brain and people's ability to learn.