As with our physical capacity or performance, over the years, our psychological abilities decline due to age-related neural degeneration. If we add to this the possibility of suffering a neurodegenerative disease, these functions are even more affected.

With the intention of delaying or dilating this cognitive decline 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.

What is cognitive stimulation?

Cognitive stimulation exercises consist of a series of tasks or activities that have been designed to protect, maintain or even improve cognitive functions, as these tend to worsen over the years.

To this end, the mental health expert can design a structured stimulation programme that is adapted to the needs of the person and through activities that exercise functions such as memory, attention, perception, concentration, language production and executive functions, the person can strengthen or maintain his or her cognitive functions "in form", as well as slow down the cognitive deterioration produced by age or by some type of neurodegenerative disease .

Over the years, our body changes and degenerates. This degeneration, which occurs very slowly and progressively, affects both our physical and psychological capabilities and is intensified by the appearance of any form of neurodegenerative condition.

In neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s type dementias, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Huntington’s and Parkinson’s diseases or Friedreich’s ataxias, they cause the progressive death of the neuronal tissue, which entails harmful consequences for both the physical health of the person and his or her cognitive functioning .

In these specific cases, although cognitive stimulation exercises cannot stop the progression of the disease, they can to some extent slow it down, and also make it easier for the person to lead the least dependent life possible.

In order to carry out this cognitive stimulation effectively, the functions that the person still has must be encouraged or strengthened, since if we try to recover a function that has disappeared completely, the only thing we can achieve is to increase the patient’s levels of frustration.

If we otherwise exercise the functions that are still active, in addition to regenerating or enhancing the functioning of these skills, the patient’s self-esteem and sense of self-efficacy will also be improved , which will be reflected in an improvement in the patient’s quality of life.

In order to create a program that is best suited to the specific needs of the person, before starting treatment, the professional must carry out an assessment of the state of the patient’s cognitive skills, and then establish objectives and design an appropriate program to achieve them.

When can you practice?

The design of cognitive stimulation exercise programs are designed to intervene and act on the usual demands or needs that usually appear over the years or with the onset of a neurodegenerative disease.

The most common cases that require this type of activity include

  • Prevention of cognitive degeneration .
  • Memory disorders, loss and forgetfulness.
  • To slow down the development of mild or early stage dementias.
  • Problems in executive functions .
  • Prevention of falls, improvement of motor coordination and praxias.
  • Alteration of space-time orientation.
  • Maintenance of language and communication skills.
  • To promote mental clarity and reasoning.
  • Maintenance of visoperceptive, visospatial and visoconstructive functions
  • Cognitive symptomatology of depressive disorders
  • Cognitive stimulation exercises.

There are many games, tasks or activities that can serve as cognitive stimulation exercises . Although some of them are traditional games, commonly associated with the training of agility or mental skills, many others have been specially created for this purpose.

Some of these activities include

1. Reading and writing exercises

The simple fact of maintaining reading habits, as well as writing in a diary or transcribing some texts, can help protect and enhance creativity and attention , as well as work on memory processes.

2. Traditional board games

Some traditional board games such as Parcheesi, playing cards or dominoes have a great deal of benefit in training cognitive skills , as well as promoting social interactions .

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

Besides being a very relaxing activity, drawing and painting exercises exercise creativity and concentration and are also very motivating for the person.

4. Crossword puzzles, sudoku and wordsearch puzzles

The main advantage of this type of activities is that they are practically infinite, this means that the person 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

The tangram is a traditional game of Chinese origin in which by rearranging geometric pieces, the person must manage to form a series of pre-established shapes.

Thanks to this original game, the person can exercise skills such as visperceptive ability, visuospatial orientation, attention and concentration , capacity of abstraction, cognitive flexibility, creativity and motor skills.

6. Exercise: How many are there?

In this game, the patient is presented with a series of geometric figures , composed of other figures of the same characteristics. You are then asked to count how many geometrical figures there are in total.

With this activity, attention and concentration, visual perception, planning and perseverance are enhanced.

7. Exercise: “The word searcher”

In this activity the person is asked to create new words from a list of words already given. Thanks to it we can exercise the attention span, planning and reading skills 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 exercise “Grid of One Hundred”, 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 ability, calculation and cognitive flexibility are exercised.