What are considered good exercises for brain health?
To be a flexible thinking machine, the brain needs to be stimulated. When we get bored, our mind wanders, we become easily distracted and fail to concentrate. There are fascinating brain scans called PET scans (Positron Emission Tomography) and fMRI scans (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) that show how the brain responds to various mental challenges. They reveal how much of the brain is activated by various mental tasks. When stimulated with a novel task, large brain regions get involved in the “thinking process.” If a task involves some mundane process, minimal regions of brain activation are revealed. This tells brain researchers that the optimal mental exercises are those that are new, different, novel and require thinking “outside the box.” This mentally challenging thinking pattern is engaged during stimulating occupational pursuits or school projects and during leisure activities such as solving complex mental problems, while learning a new language, learning how to play a
