Cognitive agility games: Is it possible to improve mental agility in a playful way?

Some games are a real gym for the brain. They have the ability to get you into shape. They can turn it into a more agile and faster organ, sharper and more precise. These games often challenge the brain that needs to get out of its comfort zone in order to overcome the challenges that the game brings to it.

Questions & Answers games like Trivial are perfect for testing memory and reasoning skills. The mental exercise we do with these games consists of browsing through our memory until we find the information that the game asks for. Along the way, knowledge is refreshed, and new ones are acquired. Everything happens in a playful way, and if we play with other people, we also train social skills, patience, and conversation.

There is a wide variety of alternatives to practice this type of engagement. From the totally analog and almost vintage like tabletops, to games online and the apps. However, experts believe that to further boost mental work, you should choose games that encourage collaboration with other people, instead of playing solo with a screen.

Other games that enhance cognitive stimulation are crossword puzzles, Sudoku puzzles and other pastimes that are a very complete mental exercise, as they speed up our mental processes, sharpen our reasoning faculties and train our memory. In addition, they help us expand vocabulary, remember new words and acquire a greater general knowledge. These games strengthen neural connections and are great allies to protect the brain from neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s or dementia. The key is to gradually increase the difficulty level so that the game always represents an intellectual challenge to overcome.

Chess is another high-end “training room” for the brain. It encompasses a wide variety of mental abilities and efforts. It is one of the best activities that we can practice to enhance intelligence, concentration and attention. Its practice improves the depth of analysis and trains different calculation mechanisms. It also favors creativity and the ability to draw up strategies and decision making. All these characteristics are very relevant to determine the IQ of an individual. In the study The relationship between cognitive ability and chess ability, a comprehensive meta-analysis (2016) by Dr. Alexander P. Burgoyne, showed that playing chess improved fluent reasoning, comprehension, short-term memory and reasoning speed.

Puzzles and brain teasers keep the mind awake. When trying to put together one of these games, reasoning strategies, memory, attention, and logic are launched. These games alone can enhance cognitive agility, improving short-term memory, and even cognitive reserve.
In addition, with its practice, concentration, and the ability to solve problems in real life are trained. This happens because these games train visual memory, spatial vision, and imagination – three skills that we continually need to apply to other spheres of life and that keep our cognitive abilities in shape.

Dominoes is another top-notch mental gym. It is a game of dexterity and mental ability with a strong presence of mathematics and logic that stimulates neural connections and train cognitive agility, association capacity, coordination, memory, and language. It is an excellent cognitive exercise that, unfortunately, is considered a game for the elderly but is useful at all ages.

Lastly, video games have emerged as excellent training for the brain as they help us make quick decisions, develop strategic thinking, and train our ability to react to situations of uncertainty. In 2015 the Nature journal published a study which showed that the continuous and responsible use of video games could increase the gray matter of the brain involved in complex processes that require greater speed and efficiency of mental processing. However, not all video games have the ability to improve our cognitive abilities, only those that force us to think in a different way, faster and more efficiently than you would in your daily life.