There are various high-tech cognitive exercises available through paid programs such as Lumosity. Such programs offer digitally based brain exercises for most ages and ability levels.

However, there are also relatively low-tech, low-cost, effective options for cognitive strengthening, available to most individuals with some ingenuity and effort. Harvard Medical School has outlined several of these Godman, , including the following:.

The supportive factors, exercises, and games cited above remain valid for maintaining cognitive fitness as we grow older, with certain caveats. For example, a verbal memory task for an older person with encroaching memory problems might be modified to include a 6-item list of words to recall, instead of a item list.

Prompts and cues can spur memory and provide the individual with an experience of success. If it is too hard, you risk overwhelming the person.

Finding the right cognitive challenge for such individuals allows them to exercise their faculties and experience some success, rather than becoming overwhelmed and frustrated.

Neuropsychological testing is one way to assess cognitive health. However, this option can be costly and labor intensive. There are a number of excellent tools available to practitioners for basic screening and tracking of cognitive health.

Many of these tools are designed for use with older people, but some are meant for use with younger people as well. This assessment uses patient history, observations by clinicians, and concerns raised by the patient, family, or caregivers.

These measures include the General Practitioner Assessment of Cognition, Memory Impairment Screen, and the Mini-Cog brief psychometric test. These supplements include B-complex and E vitamins, minerals such as zinc, herbs such as ginkgo biloba, and other botanicals.

The Ginkgo Evaluation of Memory study followed 3, older adult participants over the course of six years, randomly assigned to ginkgo biloba or placebo groups DeKosky et al.

The study found no evidence that the supplement slowed cognitive decline or prevented dementia. B-complex vitamins such as B6, B9, and B12 have not been shown to prevent or slow cognitive decline in older adults McMahon et al. Studies have shown that certain supplements such as zinc can have positive effects on frontal or executive function in children and adults Warthon-Medina et al.

Recently, a large prospective cohort study followed 5, participants for 9. As always, it is best to consult your physician before taking either approved medications or medical supplements.

We have a number of resources that specifically apply to strength assessments and a healthy mind. For some practical resources to get you started, check out some of the following. This handout is a valuable resource you can use to educate children about the benefits of exercise for mental wellness.

In particular, it lists several of the emotional and neurochemical benefits of exercise and recommends several forms of exercise children might enjoy. Use it to facilitate discussion about the link between mind and body when talking about the brain and cognitive health.

This exercise invites clients to illustrate the gap between the extent to which they are currently using their strengths and the extent to which they could. This exercise effectively gives clients immediate visual feedback on their strength use and can facilitate discussion around plans to increase or optimize strengths use.

This measure was created with the help of the Activity Builder at Quenza. Quenza is a platform created by the same team who established PositivePsychology. The Cognitive Fitness Survey can be used for self-reflection. It is designed to assess and track physical and emotional factors that contribute to cognitive health.

It also assesses and tracks specific cognitive health dimensions, including attention; short-term, remote, and prospective memory; and organizational capacity. Use them to help others flourish and thrive. For much of their history, clinical psychology and related helping professions focused on assessing and treating emotional, social, and cognitive deficits.

With the positive psychology movement in the late s came a different emphasis: finding and building upon strengths. Aspects of health and wellbeing began to be studied more assiduously and became the focus of interventions.

Initially, cognitive health was one aspect of overall health and wellbeing that was overlooked by many researchers and practitioners. Fortunately, more recently, cognitive health has begun to receive the attention it deserves, as both a research topic and focus of intervention Aidman, As with other components of health and wellness, cognitive health, including attentional capacity, memory abilities, and organizational and problem-solving skills, can be enhanced with the right support and exercises.

Staying physically healthy pays large dividends toward such cognitive fitness. Physical health includes maintaining a heart-healthy diet, sleeping well, and exercising regularly. In addition, basic, cost-effective mental activities and exercises can further boost cognitive fitness.

Many of these are enjoyable in their own right and can boost cognitive skills. To be most effective, cognitive activities and exercises should involve as much novelty as possible. To find the right activities, a positive psychology, strengths-based approach might be useful.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. About the author Dr. Jeffrey Gaines earned a Ph. in clinical psychology from Pennsylvania State University in He sees clinical psychology as a practical extension of philosophy and specializes in neuropsychology — having been board-certified in Jeffrey is currently Clinical Director at Metrowest Neuropsychology in Westborough, MA.

How useful was this article to you? Not useful at all Very useful 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Submit Share this article:. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Testing hypotheses about the factors that predict or moderate treatment responses in the remarkably heterogenous OA population requires large and diverse cohort samples.

Such large-scale studies are also needed to move the field beyond findings from relatively small studies towards the real-world validation of cognitive therapeutic technologies. An emerging solution is to leverage modern, mobile technology for example, the Internet, wireless mobile devices, and cloud-based analytical and storage servers to facilitate the recruitment of larger, more diverse, representative cohorts into clinical trials while minimizing costs.

The need for such a solution has been augmented by the COVID pandemic, which has led to an even greater necessity for new, creative tools for improving public mental health in the setting of such unpredictable conditions. New digital health technologies also hold promise for altering the landscape of how RCTs are conducted Fig.

Indeed, it is now clear that mobile technology can be especially powerful in improving research-participant access, especially to those living in rural areas or members of minority ethnic groups, while simultaneously reducing the expense and time course of such trials Most of these research platforms have been designed to assist with enrolling participants, collecting data, and applying human resources for data interrogation, rather than complex study coordination.

However, we believe that the next phase of this field will use technology for more than data collection, but also to make easily interpretable data more actionable for both researchers and participants.

Indeed, there is an important value in developing technology not only to collect data, but also to accelerate the pace of research and enhance the security of data collected remotely for example, through cloud-based analytics and storage.

Relevant to this discussion, more OA are embracing new technology every year. The clear trend is toward increased adoption of mobile technologies, making it important to study and refine digital interventions for enhancing cognition now, so they can reach as many OA as possible.

Critically, the percentage of the population that owns a mobile device is equally distributed among white, Black, and Hispanic people , , Thus, fully remote trials of digital therapeutics have the potential to greatly increase the ability to disseminate these interventions at scale and to reach drastically more diverse study populations than would be expected from a trial that requires participants to come into a medical or research center.

One step toward addressing this goal is making such tools easily accessible. Research has demonstrated that telemedicine and mobile approaches show comparable efficacy to in-person treatment , resulting in substantial interest in using mobile apps as an alternative care-delivery platform.

Such digital approaches to cognitive enhancement have the potential for breaking down barriers to access, especially in underserved or hard-to-reach populations of OA We have reviewed several approaches in which technology can aid in the personalization of cognitive enhancement in aging, but other emerging technologies also offer exciting new avenues for innovation.

Elements such as art, music, story, challenge, and competition could be dynamically manipulated to maximize engagement and compliance to further personalize experiences.

Key to such an approach will be collection of large amounts of data and the application of machine-learning and artificial-intelligence techniques to create robust and dynamic predictive models of the factors that moderate treatment responses at the individual level.

There are a host of new accessible mobile technologies that can be leveraged to collect ecologically valid data as individualized baseline signatures and ongoing diagnostic monitoring of OA in the real-world and in real-time In addition to cognitive enhancement, technology is transforming the broader landscape of mental health and high-quality, personalized care for healthy OA who are living longer with each generation.

Technologies that attempt to modify and support real-life behaviors have advanced at a tremendous pace in recent years. For example, several methods have been developed to combat loneliness, anxiety, and depression, which are common in OA Examples include online and mobile delivery of established clinical treatments, such as cognitive behavioral therapy ; VR paradigms for fostering greater feelings of connectedness and boosting mood ; artificial-intelligence-driven voice-activated technologies for example, Alexa that not only help with organization and access to news and media, but also increase connectedness through human—machine conversations ; and therapeutic robots in the form of appealing animals that help OA cope with anxiety and memory loss These technologies are exciting and add to the emerging ecosystem of methods that can be tailored to the specific needs of an individual.

The impact of these therapeutic technologies could be augmented through combinatorial approaches as discussed above and by the incorporation of closed-loop systems for example, a robotic companion that receives passive physiological signals from a wearable device and uses those data to guide its real-time engagement with its OA companion.

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Review and evaluation of mindfulness-based iPhone apps. JMIR Mhealth Uhealth 3 , e82 Posted March 12, Reviewed by Gary Drevitch. The New York Times recently published an article about the "brain fitness" business, "Do Brain Workouts Work? Without a variety of other daily habits, these "brain-training" games cannot stave off mental decline or dramatically improve cognitive function.

Most of these brain-training games will have some benefits, but it's impossible to optimize brain connectivity and maximize neurogenesis growth of new neurons sitting in a chair while playing a video game on a two-dimensional screen.

In order to give your brain a full workout, you need to engage both hemispheres of the cerebrum, and of the cerebellum. You can only do this by practicing, exploring, and learning new things in the three dimensions of the real world, not while being sedentary in front of a flat-screen.

These digital programs can't really exercise the cerebellum Latin: "Little Brain" and, therefore, literally only train half your brain. These "brain-training workouts" are the equivalent of only ever doing upper-body workouts, without ever working out your lower body. Although the cerebellum constitutes only 10 percent of the brain by volume, it houses over 50 percent of the brain's total neurons.

Neuroscientists are perplexed by this disproportionate ratio of neurons. Whatever the cerebellum is doing to optimize brain function and improve cognition , it recruits a lot of neurons to do it.

I slightly disagree. I believe these programs do have a risk because they add more sedentary screen time to a person's day.

This additional time spent on a mobile device or computer takes away from time that people could spend breaking a sweat, exploring the world, interacting with friends and family, making art, playing a musical instrument, writing, reading a novel, daydreaming, practicing mindfulness meditation , etc.

I did a meta-analysis of recent neuroscience studies to compile a list of habits that can improve cognitive function for people in every generation. These habits can improve cognitive function and protect against cognitive decline for a lifespan.

Last December, researchers at Boston University School of Medicine discovered more evidence that physical activity is beneficial for brain health and cognition. The study found that certain hormones , which are increased during exercise, may help improve memory. The researchers were able to correlate blood hormone levels from aerobic fitness and identify positive effects on memory function linked to exercise.

In , researchers at Dana-Farber and Harvard Medical School released a study showing a specific molecule released during endurance exercise that improves cognition and protects the brain against degeneration.

See " Scientists Discover Why Exercise Makes You Smarter. In their breakthrough discovery, scientists honed in on a specific molecule called irisin that is produced in the brain during endurance exercise through a chain reaction. Irisin is believed to have neuroprotective effects. Researchers were also able to artificially increase the levels of irisin in the blood which activated genes involved in learning and memory.

A study of children in Finland investigated the link between cardiovascular fitness, motor skills, and academic test scores. The researchers found that first-graders with poor motor skills also had poorer reading and arithmetic test scores.

Across the board, children with better performance in fitness and motor skills had higher cognitive function and scored better on reading and arithmetic tests. A study , "The Impact of Sustained Engagement on Cognitive Function in Older Adults: The Synapse Project," found that learning new and demanding skills while maintaining an engaged social network is key to staying sharp as we age.

The findings reveal that less-demanding activities, such as listening to classical music or simply completing word puzzles, probably don't provide noticeable benefits to an aging mind and brain. Older adults have long been encouraged to stay active and to flex their memory and learning like any muscle that you have to "use or lose.

When you are inside your comfort zone you may be outside of the enhancement zone. Another study, from , found that a training program designed to boost cognition in older adults also increased their openness to new experiences, demonstrating for the first time that a non-drug intervention in older adults can change a personality trait once thought to be fixed throughout a person's lifespan.

A study from Michigan State found that childhood participation in arts and crafts leads to innovation , patents, and increases the odds of starting a business as an adult.

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Abdi, S. Emerging technologies with potential care and support applications for older people: review of gray literature. JMIR Aging 3 , e Download references. We would like to thank R.

Anguera for artistic and stylistic contributions to the figures as well as our colleagues, T. Zanto, S. Niblett, and C. Thompson for their contributions to several of the projects described in this article.

The authors of this Perspective were supported in part by NIH grants RAG D. and A. and J. and the Neuroscape Network of philanthropists who have supported our aging and cognitive intervention research over the last decade. Department of Neurology, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA.

David A. Ziegler, Joaquin A. Anguera, Courtney L. Gallen, Wan-Yu Hsu, Peter E. Neuroscape, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA. Gallen, Peter E. Weill Institute for Neurosciences, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA.

Department of Psychiatry, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA. Department of Physiology, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA. You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar.

were responsible for conception and design, drafting, and substantial revisions. were responsible for drafting and substantial revisions. Correspondence to David A. Ziegler or Adam Gazzaley. is co-founder, shareholder, BOD member, and advisor for Akili Interactive, a company that produces therapeutic video games.

is shareholder and advisor for Neuroelectrics, a company that produces non-invasive brain stimulation devices and for Empatica, a company that produces biophysiological recording devices.

The other authors declare no potential competing interests. Nature Aging thanks Sara Czaja and the other, anonymous, reviewer s for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Reprints and permissions. Leveraging technology to personalize cognitive enhancement methods in aging.

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Download PDF. Subjects Cognitive ageing Predictive markers Psychology. Abstract As population aging advances at an increasing rate, efforts to help people maintain or improve cognitive function late in life are critical.

An umbrella review of randomized control trials on the effects of physical exercise on cognition Article 27 March The use of commercial computerised cognitive games in older adults: a meta-analysis Article Open access 17 September Mechanisms underlying training-induced cognitive change Article 12 January Main Population aging — the increasing percentage of older adults OA in a community — is poised to become one of the most significant social transformations of the twenty-first century, with implications for nearly all sectors of society 1.

Box 1 A glossary of key terms 3D head-mounted display virtual reality HMD VR : Participants are visually and auditorily immersed in a virtual environment using HMD VR, in which they can easily discern the dimension of depth 3D because imagery is presented via binocular, curved-field lenses mounted in the headset.

Full size image. Emerging closed-loop cognitive enhancement technologies In this section, we provide brief examples of emerging approaches to cognitive enhancement that rely on closed-loop designs and new technologies that show promise for transforming the field see Fig.

Toward a precision-medicine approach to cognitive enhancement The OA population is extremely heterogeneous Non-invasive brain stimulation to augment cognitive enhancement An example of a technology-based, non-pharmacological strategy for enhancing cognition in aging that has benefited from a precision-medicine approach is non-invasive brain stimulation NIBS.

Mobile technology to validate cognitive enhancement approaches Testing hypotheses about the factors that predict or moderate treatment responses in the remarkably heterogenous OA population requires large and diverse cohort samples.

Increasing access to cognitive enhancement technologies Relevant to this discussion, more OA are embracing new technology every year. The future of technology-based cognitive enhancement We have reviewed several approaches in which technology can aid in the personalization of cognitive enhancement in aging, but other emerging technologies also offer exciting new avenues for innovation.

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Basically, the brain used more energy during those training times, and bulked up in thickness—which means more neural connections, or new learned expertise—after this intense training. And they became experts at Tetris.

Cool, right? However, they remained just as good at Tetris; their skill did not decrease. The brain scans showed less brain activity during the game-playing, instead of more, as in the previous days.

Why the drop? Their brains got more efficient. Once their brain figured out how to play Tetris, and got really good at it, it got lazy. Efficiency is not your friend when it comes to cognitive growth.

In order to keep your brain making new connections and keeping them active, you need to keep moving on to another challenging activity as soon as you reach the point of mastery in the one you are engaging in.

You want to be in a constant state of slight discomfort, struggling to barely achieve whatever it is you are trying to do, as Einstein alluded to in his quote.

This keeps your brain on its toes, so to speak. When I say thinking creatively will help you achieve neural growth, I am not talking about painting a picture, or doing something artsy, like we discussed in the first principle, Seeking Novelty.

When I speak of creative thinking, I am talking about creative cognition itself, and what that means as far as the process going on in your brain. Contrary to popular belief, creative thinking does not equal "thinking with the right side of your brain".

It involves recruitment from both halves of your brain, not just the right. In order to do this well, you need both right and left hemispheres working in conjunction with each other.

Several years ago, Dr Robert Sternberg , former Dean at Tufts University, opened the PACE Psychology of Abilities, Competencies, and Expertise Center, in Boston. Sternberg has been on a quest to not only understand the fundamental concept of intelligence, but also to find ways in which any one person can maximize his or her intelligence through training, and especially, through teaching in schools.

As part of a research study, The Rainbow Project [pdf], he created not only innovative methods of creative teaching in the classroom, but generated assessment procedures that tested the students in ways that got them to think about the problems in creative and practical ways, as well as analytical, instead of just memorizing facts.

He wanted to find out if by teaching students to think creatively and practically about a problem, as well as for memory, he could get them to i Learn more about the topic, ii Have more fun learning, and iii Transfer that knowledge gained to other areas of academic performance.

He wanted to see if by varying the teaching and assessment methods, he could prevent "teaching to the test" and get the students to actually learn more in general.

He collected data on this, and boy, did he get great results. In a nutshell? On average, the students in the test group the ones taught using creative methods received higher final grades in the college course than the control group taught with traditional methods and assessments.

But—just to make things fair— he also gave the test group the very same analytical-type exam that the regular students got a multiple choice test , and they scored higher on that test as well.

That means they were able to transfer the knowledge they gained using creative, multimodal teaching methods, and score higher on a completely different cognitive test of achievement on that same material. Sound familiar? I mentioned earlier that efficiency is not your friend if you are trying to increase your intelligence.

Unfortunately, many things in life are centered on trying to make everything more efficient. This is so we can do more things, in a shorter amount of time, expending the least amount of physical and mental energy possible. Take one object of modern convenience, GPS. GPS is an amazing invention.

I am one of those people GPS was invented for. My sense of direction is terrible. I get lost all the time. So when GPS came along, I was thanking my lucky stars. But you know what? After using GPS for a short time, I found that my sense of direction was worse.

If I failed to have it with me, I was even more lost than before. So when I moved to Boston—the city that horror movies and nightmares about getting lost are modeled after—I stopped using GPS.

I had a new job which involved traveling all over the burbs of Boston, and I got lost every single day for at least 4 weeks. I got lost so much, I thought I was going to lose my job due to chronic lateness I even got written up for it.

But—in time, I started learning my way around, due to the sheer amount of practice I was getting at navigation using only my brain and a map. I began to actually get a sense of where things in Boston were, using logic and memory, not GPS. I can still remember how proud I was the day a friend was in town visiting, and I was able to effectively find his hotel downtown with only a name and a location description to go on—not even an address.

It was like I had graduated from navigational awareness school. Technology does a lot to make things in life easier, faster, more efficient, but sometimes our cognitive skills can suffer as a result of these shortcuts, and hurt us in the long run.

Not a big deal. Your overall health will probably decline as a result. Your brain needs exercise as well. If you stop using your problem-solving skills, your spatial skills, your logical skills, your cognitive skills—how do you expect your brain to stay in top shape—never mind improve?

Think about modern conveniences that are helpful, but when relied on too much, can hurt your skill in that domain. Translation software: amazing, but my multilingual skills have declined since I started using it more.

Same goes for spell-check and autocorrect. In fact, I think autocorrect was one of the worst things ever invented for the advancement of cognition. You know the computer will catch your mistakes, so you plug along, not even thinking about how to spell any more.

As a result of years of relying on autocorrect and spell-check, as a nation, are we worse spellers? I would love someone to do a study on this. There are times when using technology is warranted and necessary.

Walking to work every so often or taking the stairs instead of the elevator a few times a week is recommended to stay in good physical shape. Lay off the GPS once in a while, and do your spatial and problem-solving skills a favor.

Keep it handy, but try navigating naked first. Your brain will thank you. And that brings us to the last element to maximize your cognitive potential: Networking. If not, start. By networking with other people—either through social media such as Facebook or Twitter, or in face-to-face interactions—you are exposing yourself to the kinds of situations that are going to make objectives much easier to achieve.

By exposing yourself to new people, ideas, and environments, you are opening yourself up to new opportunities for cognitive growth. Being in the presence of other people who may be outside of your immediate field gives you opportunities to see problems from a new perspective, or offer insight in ways that you had never thought of before.

Learning is all about exposing yourself to new things and taking in that information in ways that are meaningful and unique—networking with other people is a great way to make that happen. Steven Johnson , author who wrote the book "Where Good Ideas Come From", discusses the importance of groups and networks for the advancement of ideas.

If you are looking for ways to seek out novel situations, ideas, environments, and perspectives, then networking is the answer. It would be pretty tough to implement this "Get Smarter" regiment without making networking a primary component.

Greatest thing about networking: Everyone involved benefits. Collective intelligence for the win! Remember back to the beginning of this article where I told the story about my clients with autism spectrum disorders? Why were those children able to achieve at such a high level?

It was not by chance or miracle—it was because we incorporated all of these learning principles into their therapy program. While most other therapy providers were stuck in the " Errorless Learning " paradigm and barely-modified " Lovaas Techniques " of Applied Behavior Analysis, we adopted and fully embraced a multimodal approach to teaching.

We made the kids struggle to learn, we used the most creative ways we could think of, and we challenged them beyond what they seemed capable of—we set the bar very high. They surpassed that bar time and time again, and made me truly believe that amazing things are possible if you have enough will and courage and perseverance to set yourself on that path and stick with it.

If those kids with disabilities can live this lifestyle of constantly maximizing their cognitive potential, then so can you. This is the kind of intelligence that is valuable, and this is the type of intelligence we should be striving for and encouraging. The motivation for the former is driven by dopamine, and associated with curiosity—the latter by adrenaline, and typically associated with more dangerous activities.

Garlick, D. Understanding the Nature of the General Factor of Intelligence: The Role of Individual Differences in Neural Plasticity as an Explanatory Mechanism.

Psychological Review , , no. Haier, R. The Parieto-Frontal Integration Theory P-FIT of Intelligence: Converging Neuroinaging Evidence. Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Cerebral glucose metabolism and intelligence. Vernon, Biological approaches to the study of human intelligenc e pp.

Norwood, N. Susanne M. Jaeggi, M. Improving Fluid intelligence With Training on Working Memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. doi: Ramey, C. Early Intervention and Early Experience. American Psychologist , Sternberg, R.

Increasing Fluid Intelligence is Possible After All. PNAS , , no. Implicit Theories of Intelligence, Creativity, and Wisdom. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 49 , The Theory of Sucessful Intelligence.

Review of General Psychology, 3 , Weinberg, R. Intelligence and IQ. She teaches social skills, communication, and behavior intervention in home and community settings, training both children as well as parents on methods of therapy.

Andrea works as a researcher with METODO Social Sciences Institute , the U. branch of METODO Transdisciplinary Research Group on Social Sciences, based in Bogotá, Colombia, investigating the neuro-cognitive factors behind human behavior- this includes topics such as creativity, intelligence, illegal behavior, and disorders on the divergent-convergent thinking spectrum of schizophrenia and autism.

As well as being a researcher of creativity, she is also herself a fine artist and has been trained in various visual communication medium, ranging from traditional drawing to digital painting, graphic design, and 3D modeling and animation for the medical and behavioral sciences.

She blogs at The Rogue Neuron and tweets as AndreaKuszewski. The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

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