How to avoid dementia and age-related memory decline?

Cognitive Training

Types of cognitive training that can be used in everyday life

The simplest example is simple communication—just because social interaction—with family, neighbors, in a store or pharmacy, at work—touches on many aspects of cognitive thinking. This includes memory (recognizing faces, names), attention (as you need to be attentive in conversation and adapt to what is happening around), speech (you need to understand spoken language and correctly construct phrases to convey your thoughts), and control of your behavior.

Certainly, this can partly be attributed to automatisms—basic skills acquired throughout life. However, they can also be trained and improved, including our executive functions.

Therefore, the first piece of advice – incorporate more social interactions and conversations into your life: with family, neighbors, make phone calls, attend events you enjoy, socialize and meet with friends

Another category of cognitive exercises is learning new skills. Thus, new interneuronal connections are formed, slowing down the processes of physiological aging and neurodegeneration. Maybe you will start learning a new language, mastering a new cuisine and recipes, or learning to play a new musical instrument (even a drum with its clear rhythm and organization will do). Age, in this case, cannot be an obstacle

Great options include tactile hobbies such as knitting, drawing, modeling, and constructing. You can learn a new card game or any other board game—mahjong, chess, poker, Monopoly. Learning a new dance is also a complex cognitive task, as you need to remember and perform long sequences of body movements, coordinate with the music’s tempo, and adapt to your partner’s movements (especially in partner dances)

And the third category, which can improve cognitive function and diversify daily life, is solving puzzles. Puzzles can be different—logical and humorous tasks, detective stories, assembling jigsaw and wooden puzzles, solving Sudoku (puzzles in the form of a 9×9 grid where you need to place numbers from 1 to 9 in a specific position) and Japanese crosswords, creating your own crosswords. And you can always come up with your own variations—if you catch the idea) Wishing you luck and health for many years!

Neurologist-Parkinsonologist, PhD, Akhmadeeva Gulnara Nailevna. V.S. Buzaev International Medical Centre