10 COGNITIVE STIMULATION ACTIVITIES FOR CHILDREN AND ADULTS - ECONOMÍA - 2025

The cognitive activities can help boost cognitive abilities such as attention, memory, concentration, creativity, orientation, calculation, among others. In this article we will explain 10 simple exercises.

Are you less mentally agile, do you have memory loss, or difficulty maintaining attention for a long time? Do you have a hard time concentrating on a particular task?

We can work different muscles of our body through physical activity, physical exercise or sport. Well, brain work is done through what we know today as cognitive stimulation.

The years do not pass in vain for our brain, since in the same way that our body, it is aging. Our brain structures are deteriorating, neuronal loss progresses, the production of neurotransmitters decreases…

All these actions are important variables that, obviously, reveal their consequences in the general functioning of our mind.

However, we have good news. The human brain, like any other muscle in our anatomy, can be worked, with the aim of enhancing its cognitive abilities.

If you read this article carefully you will learn what cognitive stimulation is, what its benefits are and how it can work. You may also be interested in these games to train the mind.

What exactly is cognitive stimulation?

The term "Plasticity of the nervous system" refers to this potential that our brain has to modify, adapt and enhance its structures and its functioning.

Thus, cognitive stimulation is the name given to techniques and strategies that seek to optimize the effectiveness of brain function through the different cognitive capacities that human beings possess:

• Perception.
• Attention.
• Reasoning.
• Abstraction.
• Memory.
• Language.
• Orientation processes.
• Praxais.

All these cognitive functions are performed and trained by humans practically daily. When we read a book we work on our language and memory, when we drive down an unfamiliar street our orientation, when we pay attention to our boss's work instructions, etc.

Now, do we do enough cognitive work throughout the day? Probably a person who is studying, reads frequently, or has a job that requires a lot of brain activity will do it.

However, it could be that we work a lot on some cognitive functions, but at the same time we are neglecting others… Well, this is exactly what cognitive stimulation intends: to ensure a complete work of all our cognitive functions.

Who can benefit from cognitive stimulation?

The answer is simple. Cognitive stimulation can be applied to anyone, since, as you will surely agree with me, any of us can improve our mental abilities.

Cognitive stimulation has two main objectives:

1. Increase the development of mental abilities.
2. Improve and optimize the functioning of these capacities.

This type of intervention is usually witnessed in early childhood intervention programs, training in attention or concentration in athletes, the enhancement of professional skills in different jobs, etc.

However, you do not have to be in any of these situations to work on it, since the performance that you can get from cognitive stimulation is not specific to any vital area, since who will benefit will be your cognitive functions, it will be your brain, it will be you!

That is to say: when you do cognitive work, you activate, stimulate and train different cognitive abilities and their components in a systematic way, with the aim of transforming them into a skill or skill.

Now, after noting that cognitive stimulation is beneficial for any human being on the planet, we must review its therapeutic role, which practically encompasses the function of this technique in its entirety.

And it is that when we talk about the therapeutic role of cognitive stimulation, we are talking about cognitive impairment, cognitive deficit or dementia.

In which cases is it more advisable?

If you do not have any cognitive deficits, you can benefit from cognitive stimulation activities to improve your abilities and prolong the aging of the brain.

If, on the other hand, you already have any symptoms of deterioration, cognitive stimulation must become part of your life yes or yes! Today, cognitive stimulation is the first-choice treatment for cognitive decline and different types of dementia, the most common of which is Alzheimer's.

These pathologies are currently irreversible and incurable, but this does not mean that the evolution of the disease cannot be slowed down.

This is where cognitive stimulation comes into play, since just as it is beneficial to improve skills when we do not have any pathology, it is also very beneficial to preserve those that we still have when we have a cognitive deficit.

Thus, although there are currently some drugs aimed at cognitive enhancement such as acetylcholinesterase inhibitors (tacrine, donepezil, rivastigmine and galantamine), performing cognitive stimulation is considered essential for the treatment of dementia and cognitive impairment.

Benefits of cognitive stimulation

Let's go to see what are the benefits of cognitive stimulation.

To do this we will divide the advantages into two different groups. On the one hand, the advantages of cognitive stimulation for the individual without cognitive impairment, be it a child, adolescent, adult or the elderly, and on the other hand, the benefits for the individual who presents some type of cognitive deficit or dementia.

References

1. Lopera F (2001). Anamnesis in the study of the patient with dementia. Rev Neurol. 32 (12), 1187-1191.
2. Orrell M. Efficacy of an evidence-based cognitive stimulation therapy program for people with dementia. BRITISH JOURNAL OF P SYCHIATRY (2 0 0 3), 1 8 3, 2 4 8 - 2 5 4.
3. Summary of Research on Cognitive Stimulation Therapy (CST).