5 Habits To Care For And Keep The Frontal Lobe Trained
The frontal lobe is a very important region of the human brain. Most of the cognitive and operational functions characteristic of our species are found in this lobe. At an evolutionary level, it is one of the last lobes to develop and is significantly larger in humans compared to other species.
Among its many functions, the frontal lobe houses executive functions, which are rooted in the prefrontal cortex, without which we would not be able to carry out most of the activities we do on a daily basis. For example, we would not be able to manipulate information to guide our behavior in the present, inhibit certain behaviors inappropriate to the social context, nor would we be able to develop long-term plans, beyond what we can observe in the concrete. The evolutionary advantage we have by having the frontal lobe so developed is immense.
There is a popular saying that “the brain is a muscle.” Although on a physiological level it is a very questionable statement – since it is composed mainly of neurons and glial cells instead of muscle fibers – in metaphorical terms they are more similar than we think. Like a muscle, it is possible to train the frontal lobe to keep our cognitive abilities, such as attention, perception, working memory, reasoning and language, functioning optimally. At the same time, like a muscle, if we do not train it consistently over time we could notice a deterioration in its functioning. For that reason, in this article we will address the importance of stimulating our cognitive functions, and We will develop a set of fundamental habits to care for and keep the frontal lobe trained
Due to aging, it is expected that the performance of our cognitive functions will decrease over the years. Fortunately, scientific research has shown that we can to a certain extent “cushion” this organic deterioration by adopting certain habits that promote the practice of stimulating cognitive activities.
However, The relevance of training the functions associated with the frontal lobe is not limited to those people who are in advanced stages of their lives We should all take care of this aspect. For example, carrying out challenging tasks – in logical, attentional, creative terms, etc. – is key in adolescents and young people, since numerous studies support the idea that the prefrontal cortex completes its development only around twenty-five years of age. approximately. Promoting optimal stimulation of cognitive abilities in this time window can be key to maximizing the ability that an individual will have to operate in the world throughout their life.
The importance of practice to avoid losing neural connections
On the other hand, we said that our brain must be trained if we do not want to lose our progress. This is particularly true in relation to certain cognitive functions such as memory. When we learn something new—say, to ski—a series of connections are established in our memory between neurons, which communicate with each other through the release of neurotransmitters through a process called chemical synapses. Originally, these neurons will not be connected, but after spending a weekend in the mountains taking ski lessons, there will be a trace or record of what was learned.
We could think of these footprints as roads that are built to go from one place to another more easily: the following week, if we go skiing again, it is likely that the task will be less difficult for us than for someone who has never skied in their life; even if we think it will be impossible to stay on the skis for more than five seconds. This neural path is fixed in memory, even if we are not very skilled yet. In that sense, we could redefine Rumi’s famous phrase: “when you start walking the path, the path appears.” Traveling this synaptic path, over and over again, will make the path brighter and make us more skilled in a specific activity.
However, in the brain everything is not so simple. In the frontal lobe there are two very important areas in the fixation and execution of praxias, that is, movements, which are the premotor area and the primary motor area respectively. If we haven’t been down that path for a long time—for example, if it’s been ten years since we last skied—it’s likely that our brain has almost completely demolished that path of neural connections that articulated the movements necessary to slide across the snow without hurt us. But why has he done this? Well, maintaining connections involves a waste of biological resources. They also take up space, on a structural level. So, the logic that our brain follows is the following: if it has connections that are not used, why would it maintain them and not use those resources for something else?
For that reason, If we want to preserve our cognitive functions in an ideal state for many years, it is necessary to repeat these paths ; go through them again and again so that they persist, while we forge new ones. Our brain is plastic, allowing us to shape our nervous system by establishing synaptic connections that were not there in the first place. Carrying out activities that we have never done before can be very cognitively stimulating; but also, it can be a practice full of pleasure and personal satisfaction. The exercise of strengthening our higher functions through practice and acquisition of skills entails, in addition to notable health benefits, a source of gratification capable of embarking us towards an increasingly full life.
The frontal lobe does not work alone
A theoretical clarification to make is that, since the brain is a complex organ, multiple areas work together in this process and it is not entirely correct to analyze its parts in a completely isolated manner. Although there is a functional differentiation between these areas, we could not, for example, fix new learning if it were not for the involvement of other brain regions or structures such as the hippocampus or the amygdala
Long-term memory, essential for the consolidation and recovery of information over time, has its neurobiological substrate in another brain area, the temporal cortex. The frontal lobe is just one gear, a very important one, within this great brain machinery.
Having pointed out these aspects, below we will present some useful habits to train the frontal lobe and its associated cognitive functions.
Habits to train the frontal lobe
1. Draw
Drawing is an excellent activity to exercise creativity, but it is also great training for the execution of fine movements. Some tasks, such as trying to replicate a figure or object as accurately as possible, help motor coordination significantly.
2. Solve crosswords and puzzles
Crosswords, sudokus or puzzles have earned the reputation of being good exercises to train cognition. This is because, on the one hand, it is a practice that tests the ability to reason. It is a visuospatial exercise, since it involves aligning figures, pieces or letters coherently within a larger structure
Crossword puzzles, for their part, train us in recovering the meaning of some words according to their definition, stored in our long-term memory (specifically, in semantic memory). However, if we want to enhance this exercise and make it even more stimulating, we can time the time it takes to solve the crossword puzzle or set a time limit to achieve it. With this we will be training our ability to quickly bring stored information into working memory, a phenomenal exercise that corresponds to a function associated with the frontal lobe.
3. Physical activity
Not all activities that serve to take care of our cognitive abilities are based on mental training. We know that physical training is related to lower levels of anxiety and depression; that promotes the experience of subjective well-being; but also that it is a promoter of neuronal plasticity, an essential capacity for our nervous system to establish new connections while we learn.
4. Rest
In relation to rest, it has been shown that sleep is closely linked to processes of consolidation of learning in memory. Getting enough sleep is necessary not only to remember better, but also to be able to sustain other cognitive abilities such as attention throughout the day
5. Turn off your phone (at least for a while)
Also linked to voluntary attention, a cognitive function that is at a functional level based in the prefrontal cortex, turning off the phone for a short period of time can be a simple but very useful habit to improve our ability to concentrate. This is especially fruitful when we want to exercise the ability to maintain attention on a single stimulus in a sustained manner over time.
In the digital age, it is common that we have become accustomed to dividing our attention between screens and real life ; or that the ephemeral videos that we consume on social networks have accustomed us to holding our attention for no more than fifteen seconds. Turning off the phone and trying to do an activity focused on a single object or moment—such as reading a paper book or directing attention toward one’s body when meditating—can significantly increase our ability to develop practices or hobbies that promote our cognitive functions. and that, in turn, promote our health in a comprehensive way.
