As with our physical capacity or performance, as we age, our psychological abilities decline due to the neuronal degeneration typical of age. If we add to this the possibility of suffering from a neurodegenerative disease, these functions are even more affected.
With the intention of delaying or prolonging this cognitive deterioration over time, experts in the field of neurology have devised a series of cognitive stimulation exercises which can help people maintain or improve their mental abilities.
Cognitive stimulation exercises consist of a series of tasks or activities that have been designed with the aim of protecting, maintaining or even improving cognitive functions, since these tend to worsen over the years.
To do this, the mental health expert can design a structured stimulation program that adapts to the person’s needs and through activities that exercise functions such as memory, attention, perception, concentration, language production and functional functions. executive functions, this can enhance or keep your cognitive functions “in shape”, as well as slow down the cognitive deterioration caused by age or some type of neurodegenerative disease
As we age, our body changes and degenerates. This degeneration, which takes place very slowly and progressively, affects both our physical and psychological abilities and intensifies with the appearance of any form of neurodegenerative condition.
In neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s dementia, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Huntington’s and Parkinson’s diseases or Friedreich’s ataxias, they cause the progressive death of neuronal tissue, which leads to dire consequences for both the person’s physical health and the person’s cognitive functioning
In these specific cases, although cognitive stimulation exercises cannot stop the progression of the disease, to a certain extent they can slow it down, and also help the person lead as little a dependent life as possible.
In order to carry out this cognitive stimulation effectively, the functions that the person still retains must be encouraged or enhanced, since if we try to recover a function that has completely disappeared, the only thing we can achieve is increase the frustration levels of the person. patient.
If otherwise we exercise the functions that are still active, in addition to regenerating or enhancing the functioning of these abilities, The patient’s self-esteem and sense of self-efficacy will also improve which will be reflected as an improvement in the patient’s quality of life.
With the intention of creating a program that best suits the specific needs of the person, before starting treatment, the professional must carry out an evaluation of the state of the patient’s cognitive abilities to then establish objectives and design an adequate program to achieve these.
In what cases can it be practiced?
The design of cognitive stimulation exercise programs are designed to intervene and act on the usual demands or needs that usually appear with the passage of time or with the appearance of a neurodegenerative disease.
The most common cases that require this type of activities include:
There are countless games, tasks or activities that can serve as cognitive stimulation exercises Although some of them are traditional games, commonly associated with training agility or mental skills, many others have been specially created for this purpose.
Among some of these activities we find:
1. Reading and writing exercises
The simple act of maintaining reading habits, as well as writing in a journal or transcribing some texts, can help protect and enhance creativity and attention as well as working on memory processes.
2. Traditional board games
Some traditional board games such as ludo, playing cards or dominoes, in addition to promoting social interactions, They have a large number of benefits when it comes to training cognitive skills
Some of the functions or skills exercised are attention and concentration, working memory and short-term memory or critical thinking and flexibility of thought, since it is necessary to change strategies as the game progresses.
3. Drawing and painting
In addition to being an extremely relaxing activity, drawing and painting exercises exercise creativity and concentration and are also very motivating for the person.
4. Crossword puzzles, sudokus and word searches
The main advantage of this type of activities is that they are practically infinite, this means that the person You can increase the level of difficulty of the exercises and thus develop more and more aspects such as perception, memory processes, logic and deductive analysis, planning strategies, working memory, coordination and patience.
5.Tangram
Tangram is a traditional game of Chinese origin in which, by rearranging geometric pieces, the person must create a series of pre-established shapes.
Thanks to this original game, the person can exercise skills such as visual-perceptive ability, visuospatial orientation, attention and concentration the capacity for abstraction, cognitive flexibility, creativity and motor skills.
6. Exercise: How many are there?
In this game, the patient a series of geometric figures are presented to you, composed of other figures with the same characteristics. Next you are asked to count how many geometric figures there are in total.
With this activity it is possible to enhance attention and concentration, visual-perceptive capacity, planning or perseverance.
7. Exercise: “The word search engine”
In this activity the person is asked to create new words from a list of words already given. Thanks to it we can exercise attention span, the ability to plan and reading abilities or associated with the lexicon and vocabulary.
8. Exercise: “Grill of one hundred”
In general, all mathematical activities can be useful for exercising cognitive functions. In the “Hundred Grid” exercise, the person is presented with a grid of numbers from one to one hundred and is asked to perform a series of operations with them.
Through this and other mathematical exercises, attention and concentration skills, visual-perceptive capacity, calculation and cognitive flexibility are exercised.
