Do you exercise your brain?

T

TwoByFour

Recycles dryer sheets
Joined
May 17, 2014
Messages
412
No, I don't mean take it for a walk. :)

The recent thread on LTC prompted this post. There have been some articles on how to stay mentally fit to possibly avoid decline of cognitive abilities and perhaps even prevent dementia.

I am curious if anyone else here tries to keep mentally fit? Do you believe it is effective?

My mental workout is crossword puzzles (NY Times Sunday and the LA Times Sunday puzzles) and Sudoku. I have noticed that it is taking me longer to do the puzzles which worries me a bit. I used to be a physicist and I like to work out the physics of things I read in the news, even doing the math.

Not sure if it will work but I figure it can't hurt.
 
Yes. I play bridge several times a week, partly in an effort to maintain mental acuity.

I do not know if it is effective. I think my short term memory and my puzzle solving skills have improved. Overall I think my memory has gotten worse over the past two years but it may be that my memory may have declined even more if I had not played bridge.

Like you, I figure it can't hurt.
 
You can exercise the CPU, but the RAM is still faulty and its data often corrupted.
 
My Dad was a crossword whiz, and stayed mentally sharp for his entire 88 years. I'm not as good (by a longshot) with them, but I try. Don't know if it will work or not...but I figure it can't hurt.
 
I do play Sudoku a lot (books and on line) and can usually finish all but the very hardest ones. I seldom work on crosswords since I never could spell worth a sh*t.


I'm not sure if playing Sudoku helps or not but I do enjoy the puzzles.
 
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Yes, I do the Washington Post crosswords and various puzzles at BrainBashers - Puzzles and Brain Teasers
I played Kakurasu daily for a year or so, and put my times in a spreadsheet with the thought to see if my times were holding or getting worse, but I got bored with it and the interface was bad for catching up on missed days, so I stopped and switch around which games I play.
 
Crosswords and read a lot . My Mom made it to 99 alert and aware doing the same things..
 
I do a lot of stuff requiring brain power. I do quite a bit calculating for investments. Detailed travel planning takes a lot of concentration and brain power.

I think memorizing classical guitar pieces is a very good one. I’ve found it’s pretty difficult for me now, but I’m getting there.

I have been doing a lot of foreign language learning over the past several years including tackling a completely new one.
 
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Just regular physical exercise helps the brain, probably more than working puzzles.
 
Flying into different airports for Angel Flight. Nothing will keep you as sharp as landing at an unfamiliar airport or one where there is commercial traffic.
 
I do the NYT puzzle most days, but the thing that disturbs me is that I'm getting worse at them. Even 3-5 years ago I could usually finish most of them, maybe miss a Friday or Saturday every few weeks. Now most weeks I fail to finish one or more.

I tell myself they're just getting harder...
 
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I play Sudoku regularly at the "hard" level where you sometimes have to project 3 - 5 moves ahead. I also add up items when shopping and see how close I can get to the total at the till.

Musically, I have well over 200 songs memorized on bass and 50 on guitar and try to learn a few more each month while maintaining the ones I already know.
 
I continue to try an learn some Italian so I can impress my American friends when I am in Italy. (The Italians just laugh at me.) I do about 10-15 minutes a day of online study using DuoLingo and the occasional long lesson from Coffee Break- Italian.
 
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Amen to crossword puzzles. Another thing that works for me is to do a lot of manual calculations. I maintain an investment spreadsheet, but none of it is automated. When it's time to rebalance, I manually update all of the entries, do some cross-checks, manually calculate the percentages, etc.
 
Sit with some very clever students for a few hours several times a week and try to keep up with them!
 
I write by hand almost every day - journal, letters, notes, etc... I enjoy it and I have read that handwriting is apparently very good to keep a sharp mind. I also read a lot, play puzzle games, continue to learn new things, etc...
 
I design and build electronic circuits for home projects. I learn to work with new microcontrollers and write firmware to download into them. The complexities and capabilities that they pack into these chips that sell for peanuts are just amazing. The free software tools for these are also impressive.

Made me want to go back to work to do this everyday. Well, almost.

Well, at least it helps me keep up a bit with technology to talk with my son-in-law who works on embedded firmware for these chips for the automotive and industrial process control industries.

PS. My son-in-law told me that the chips I am playing with now are about 4 or 5 years behind. It's OK with me. They are already much more powerful than what I need.
 
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Any games are good for your mind. I intentionally do it - also it’s fun for me. I do a lot of match-3 games lately but others as well. I’m also playing Cradle of Empires which is a matching game where you build civilization. (Living large.)
 
NW-Bound said:
I design and build electronic circuits for home projects. I learn to work with new microcontrollers and write firmware to download into them. The complexities and capabilities that they pack into these chips that sell for peanuts are just amazing. The free software tools for these are also impressive.
Click to expand...

We have wild chickens where I live. I built this Rube Goldberg hi-tech chicken trap with an Arduino board, photoelectric sensors and a solenoid trip-gate. It was kind of fun. But then I discovered that chickens are pretty dumb and will basically walk into a pen with a left hand turn at the entrance and cannot figure how to get out.
 
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