When it comes to passing time, or spending some fun-filled hours, playing brain games, whether it is sudoku, crosswords, scrabble, chess, checkers, etc., is just a great idea. But do you know, that indulging yourself in brain games also boosts your memory and has a very positive effect on your thinking power? That’s right. Well, do not take us wrong; we are talking about only the ‘brain games’; and not the other fancy video games (nothing against them, we love them too!). Many researches show that these brain games are not only fun and good for a time pass, but can prove to be of great advantage to human brain. Want to know how? Read on!

Photo by SteenJepsen, CC0 1.0

1. Increase Concentration Power

A very good effect of playing brain games is that, they help you to concentrate more in everything. For example, for a student, involving in games like Sudoku, will help them to concentrate while studying for their exams, concentrate in their classrooms and at other places. For an adult, along with these advantages, they can do their official work more productively. The reason behind this is that, these games itself require a concentration to play, hence improving the overall skill eventually.

2. Upsurge Vocabulary

Games like, crossword puzzles, word finding, hangman etc. are very good for improving English vocabulary. You come across new words which you may have never heard of, or some which you’ve heard of but do not use on a daily basis. These games are great for any school going kid or even her job seeking sister. There are many other word games available in the market, so download a couple of them for yourself and for the younger one and get ready to kill the vocab!

3. Boost General Knowledge and Expand Imagination Power

There are other games, which indulge you in a play of day to day events in a very fun way. These games are really good to stay updated on what is happening around you. There are short quiz games and other games available for a fun filled experience. Not only this, playing brain games also add to expand your imagination power. It’s been revealed in some researches that people who love to play brain games are better at imagination and are more artistic.

4. Refresh and Exercise Your Mind

Like human body needs some stretching and exercising to keep it going in a healthy manner, the brain also needs some work-out to function at its best. Brain games act as a great power booster and refresher for human mind. Take a break from your daily tiring work and go for a quick 10-minute word search or Sudoku, and give that dose to your intellect and feel charged for the next task. They act like yoga for your brain and meditation for your thoughts.

5. Improve Thinking Skills and Multitasking

Treating yourself with some good brain exercise also enhances your thinking skills and you can multitask at the same time. Many researches show that people who tend to play games like chess, Sudoku etc. have a greater power to think for different ideas and can easily perform a couple of tasks simultaneously. Such people can think out of the box and bring out new ideas for different schemes. These games are also a great indoor option for kids. Sit with them and teach them new tricks and ways to crack that puzzle and solve the Sudoku.

Hope you liked the idea and we also hope that we just gave you a reason to look for that Sudoku or the crossword puzzle in the magazine or newspaper!

Colors stimulate the brain. It enables the brain to learn easier and faster. Colors have a great impact on memory and using the right kind of colors can have a positive impact on an individual.  There is a lot of interesting information that has been arising out of a number of researches and studies done on colors. This can be a great help in the field of mental health, academics and even marketing.

The three basic functions of the memory in simplified terms are attention, retention and recall. All these functions are interrelated and give specific response to stimuli such as color. Each color has a different wavelength and can each can impact the brain in various ways.

Photo by Unsplash, CC0 1.0

1. Improves Attention

According to psychologists, attention is a part of the cognitive process of the brain. Understanding how the memory responds to color and its implications can give ground breaking results in the field of medicine, education and so on.

When a stimulus in the form of particular color is presented before a person there is what the researchers call as ‘emotional arousal’ that happens. The impact of this on the memory depends on factors like background color, foreground color and the contrast between them. Red, yellow and orange are said to be warm colors that have greater impact on our attention.  Cooler colors such and blue and green said to calm the emotions. 

2. Retention

In layman’s term, the next step after attention is retention. Colors of contrast that evoke the attention of the brain may also help in retaining the information. The ability of the brain to retain information and its consequence is an area that needs more clarity and has been an area of interest for researchers. Use of colors with higher levels of contrast stimulates more attention and in turn enhances information retention. This can be done with triadic or complementary colors.

The brain is said to have two types of memory, namely, short term and long-term memory. Short term memory stores basic information such physical characteristic of certain stimuli. For example, when you see an apple the short-term memory can store information has to whether the apple is red or green, big or small. According to researcher’s information that is considered to be more important is transferred from the short-term memory to long term memory.

3. Long Term Recall

Recall is the ability of the brain to retrieve information that has already been stored in the brain. The cognitive process of attention, retention and recall is a complex subject. There are a number of factors that impact the stimuli and response. For example, color A sparks a person X’s attentions and hence enhances his memory performance. At the same time color B might trigger the interest of person Y.  Hence factors affecting the impact of memory on colors could be numerable ranging from culture, emotional make up, social factors, age and so on.

In clinical intervention colors are used to treat learning disability, dyslexia, autism and depression. Patients with Alzheimer’s disease showed improvement in short term memory performance when certain color cues were used. Colors play an important part in academics too. When used in right proportions, it perked up the learning capabilities in students. The use of appropriate color schemes in learning map is said to increase learning efficiency in students.

In general, colors aid in memorizing, hence increase the attention span. However, colors need to be used wisely. Use of too many colors can be chaotic and the opposite can be uninteresting. To overcome this people using colors in various fields take the help of a color wheel. The color wheel is made up of different color schemes.  Monochromatic, analogous, triadic are some of the traditional color schemes that are used. For an appealing effect, one has to use colors that result in color harmony. Analogous color scheme is said to create harmony.

To conclude colors are so much a part of our lives. In a sense colors are very personal. A combination of factors needs to be considered to get the right impact from colors. No two situations are the same and experimenting and evolving will result in the best use of colors.

Nowadays, there is a literal deluge of information, or ‘info’, everywhere. Smart-phones, computers and iPads are bent on spoon-feeding us with it. Think there is no side effect? Think again, please. Science tells us that the less we use our bodies, the less functional they become. That means, the less you use your brain to find out and learn things for yourself, the less intelligent you’re likely to end up as, which is not a very cheerful prospect. But has anyone ever profited from sitting around? Nah-uh! Which is why, here we bring you 4 fabulous techniques to get those cells alive and kicking again!

Photo by langll, CC0 1.0

1. Reading

Reading and literature has widespread benefits. It provides relaxation after a hard day at work, it takes you off from damaging electronic devices and it increases your knowledge store to no end. But you know why it finds a place on this list? Neuroscience has shown how reading stimulates your brain, your brain cells, or neurons, fire up with every word you read, working 3 or sometimes 4 times their usual amount. Now with that, you never need to fear degeneration from lack of activity anymore!

2. Learning A New Language

Learning a new language is an activity highly recommended if you do not want some degenerative disease like Alzheimer’s in your old age. This is because it increases brain activity, by stimulating brain cells. But you need not think of learning as a ‘chore’. It can be a lot of fun, a very rewarding pastime, you can enjoy vacations to foreign lands like you have never done before as you will understand local cultures much better with the language. And the best part is that you can combine it with reading, as you need to read in order to learn a new language, thereby helping your brain cells twice as much!

3. Playing Chess

Chess has been known throughout history as one of the most mentally challenging games to ever exist, and therefore, it is super good for your brain cells, and it properly stimulates them. Chess has been recognised to improve concentration and greatly increase strategic thinking and planning, increasing your overall intelligence. As testimony, one of the most intelligent beings to have lived on Earth, great fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, was a master of the game. And in real life too, highly intelligent people in technical fields are adept at chess. Definitely a hobby you should cultivate over summer break!

4. Learning to play a musical instrument

Music is often regarded as the universal language of love and emotion, and is one of the most relaxing forms of entertainment devised by man. It helps millions of people deal with their feelings, and in some cases, also make a living. Now, it turns out it has other benefits too – learning how to play a musical instrument has been shown to stimulate your brain cells highly, increasing intelligence and cognitive ability. Instruments like guitar, violin, piano, harmonica – the list can go on and on – are complex to play, requiring you to remember and decipher notes, boosting muscle memory and hand-eye coordination. Children who play music are shown to excel in academics, intelligent people respond to instrumentally complex music best, and Sherlock Holmes played the violin too. Basically, a load of science to back up this claim, and another plus is that you look enormously cool playing a guitar.

At the turn of the century, everything just turned highly digital very fast. To cope with it, we need our bodies and minds in spick and span order, working at equally high speeds to command these magnificent machines. We have to be forever vigilant, and cannot let our brain cells be lazy. To help you in that task, we have covered 4 simple, fun and effective measures to ensure you neural health. You might meet cool people abroad, like minded ones at new music classes, forge new friendships at the community chess club or just discover a new world inside your library, without needing to leave your home. Next time you have a month off from work, cultivate one of these traits and see your life take turns for the better in so many different ways!

We all have often heard about the benefits of meditation throughout our life but those 20 or 30 minutes of meditation seems like a pretty hard job. Isn’t it? Well, research have proven that even 5 to 10 minutes of meditation throughout the day can bring major changes into your life. It helps to boost confidence by improving your memory, attention span, and learning abilities. It also decreases your stress level and enables you to take better control of your life.

Here, we have curated for you, 3 ways in which meditation boosts your memory power.

Photo by leninscape, CC0 1.0

1. Improves Concentration

Meditation helps to improve concentration. It helps a person to live in the absolute present, rather than having an anxious mind thinking about what could go wrong or what went wrong. A routine meditating habit of less than 10 minutes a day will have direct effects on your anxiety levels, they will start to fall for your good. An anxious mind is always under the influence of stress which increases the chance of underperformance and memory issues. Now, think of that day when you were stressed and were not able to remember what you’ve studied for the class test. It is often seen in students that due to stress, score lesser marks in exams, no matter how much effort they put in. The sole reason for such cases is having an uncontrolled mind. To improve the condition and to solve the issue, the only key factor is meditation. People who adopt meditation as a way of life, are able to keep their thoughts and mind under control which turns out to be beneficial for them as their concentration and focus improves in due course of time. But, regularity is the key here.

2. Slows Down the Ageing Process

Meditation relieves a person from stress which is one of the most important reasons for ageing. A person who slows down his ageing process could reap the benefits of a young mind where the memory power or the ability to handle complex things are in abundance. When a person grows older, his body and brain gets influenced by it and becomes weaker and his decision taking capacity and learning ability reduces. Meditation gives hope in such an event but it’s better if you take the preventive action of anti-ageing by following simple meditation techniques every day. Consider Gautam Buddha, who is often considered as the perfect meditator; he lived up to age 80 in 50^th century with the charm of a new born in his eyes. A new research by a Spanish team suggests that Zen meditators had more of longer telomeres than an average person which shows the power of meditation in slowing down the ageing process.

3. Memory Brain Regions Gets Enhanced

Memory brain regions are the most important factors determining the memory capacity of a person. If it gets enhanced or improved, then it shows that a person can handle more complex things, have better focus, concentration and learning abilities. The brain’s cerebral cortex is one of such most important regions in our brain. A research conducted by Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston reached the conclusion that those people who regularly meditate, their brain’s cerebral cortex thickens over time. It happens because the size of blood vessels and the blood flow to the region increases. Many of the people who enjoys high status in the society do accept the fact that they’ve felt the change after applying meditation into their life and they became what they are because they could understand themselves better.

Meditation is like a steering wheel given to you by the supreme power to have control over your emotions, brain and body. You can use it well if you understand the advantages that it can bring into your life. Take control of your life by keeping that steering wheel in your hands and directing it to reach your destination. But, remember to learn the routes first. Understand the advantages of meditation and then implement it into your life. You’ll face difficulties in the beginning, but you’ll see positive changes after that. Do not be discouraged to spend 10 minutes daily for meditation session because that’s the time when you connect with yourself.