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70 Ideas for Stimulating Your Brain!

70 Ideas for Stimulating Your Brain

April 10, 2017

Research has identified how important it is for aging humans to provide novel stimulation to our brain to maximize brain plasticity and possibly prevent and/or slow decline in cognitive ability.  Listed below are 70 ideas for “brain stimulation.”  They cover the spectrum of simple to complex.  It is important to remember that the maximum benefit for brain stimulation consists of activities that are novel to the brain, dynamic, and require a person to do things out of the ordinary or to do the ordinary in different and new ways.

  1. Learn new card games and play with friends on a regular basis
  2. Play Sudoku
  3. Use your non-dominate hand to brush your teeth and to eat a meal with
  4. Shop at a different grocery store chain than the one you normally shop at
  5. Play Scrabble
  6. Lean a new language
  7. Go to museums
  8. Try following recipes to cook dishes you have never cooked before
  9. Play Boggle
  10. Watch foreign language movies with subtitles
  11. Assemble 500+ piece puzzles
  12. Count backwards from 100 by 7’s or any odd number combination, try doing as you walk
  13. Say the alphabet backwards, then try doing as you take a walk
  14. Take a walk and try to name something you see along the way using every letter of the alphabet
  15. Using the alphabet, name an animal for each letter.
  16. Learn to juggle
  17. Go to musicals/plays
  18. Take classes at a community college
  19. Attend lectures on topics of interest
  20. Practice doing Anagrams
  21. Drive a different route(s) to frequent destinations
  22. Join a book club
  23. Do word find/ search pages
  24. Volunteer
  25. Take an art class
  26. Practice writing lists/letters using your non-dominate hand
  27. Learn to use a smart phone
  28. Play video games
  29. Read magazine articles and then write down as many facts as you can remember from the articles
  30. Take a walk/exercise to increase the blood flow to your brain
  31. Supporting yourself, practice standing on your non-dominate leg while lifting your dominate leg off the floor
  32. Do ring toss/darts using your non-dominate arm
  33. Recall phone numbers from memory versus relying on your smart phone
  34. Learn sign language
  35. Don’t always rely on a calculator, do math calculations the old fashioned way
  36. Get a good night’s sleep
  37. Turn off the GPS
  38. Learn to eat using chop sticks, then learn to use with your non-dominate hand
  39. Do craft projects you have never done before
  40. Don’t rely on a grocery list, try recalling all of the items needed from memory
  41. Use a computer based cognitive training program
  42. Take online courses
  43. Practice meditation and Yoga
  44. Keep hydrated with water
  45. Eat based on a Mediterranean Diet
  46. Take cooking classes
  47. Make a list (at one time) of 100 things (ex. 100 things I am grateful for, 100 things I want to do before I die, etc.).
  48. Go barefoot outside
  49. Spell words backwards (ex.) stimulation = noitalumits
  50. Completely rearrange your kitchen
  51. Learn to speed read
  52. Learn to play a musical instrument
  53. Teach yourself Origami
  54. Keep a journal and at the end of the day try to record everything you can remember from that day
  55. Eat at various ethnic restaurants and try dishes you are not familiar with
  56. Learn about the brain, the parts, which part does what, etc.
  57. Stop and smell the flowers
  58. Have someone write words of different lengths on index cards. Hold a card up to a mirror and try to name the word as quickly as possible
  59. Try the games “Operation and/or Jenga.” When you are able to do with your dominate hand then use your non-dominate hand.
  60. Learn to knit or crochet
  61. Download or purchase a book of “connect the dots” Try doing them backward (highest to lowest number)
  62. Complete an “adult” coloring book
  63. Learn the 206 bones in the human body
  64. Take a wine tasting class
  65. Make a list of all the Homonyms you can think of
  66. Re-arrange your desk at work moving everything around and into new locations
  67. Buy a “brain games” book and work through the various brain games
  68. Play “Finding Waldo” it is just not for kids
  69. Go to a farmers market and make it a point each week to try something you have never tried before.
  70. Purchase a “Hoop N Loop” once you become proficient with your dominant hand use your non-dominant hand

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Filed Under: Cognition & Memory Tagged With: activities, aging, Alzheimer’s, brain, dementia

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