Conventional wisdom holds that we use just 10 percent of our brain brain cells. That’s pretty surprising, considering all of the things we do on a daily basis such as checking email, staying connected with friends on Facebook and keeping out with our social lives. While one would think that we are working to train our brain during these tasks, in most cases, we’re not. Instead, we’re filling our heads with tasks that drive us off track and keep us from really using our brain cells.
What can you do to help train your brain?
To help train your brain there are a lot of things you can do. The most important one is to keep it busy. This doesn’t mean to create a long to-do list and to get to work. Instead, to train your brain, give your brain things to do that will keep it busy. If you’re like 51% of the population that has a smartphone, you might want to consider putting yours to better use. While these gadgets help us do lots of things between email, the Internet, social networks and games, there’s a bigger use for them – training your brain. Smartphones can in fact be a great tool to help train your brain. We’re not talking just playing any old mobile game though (like Angry Birds), we’re talking about games that can help you train and stimulate your brain (and be fun at the same time).
4 mobile apps to help train your brain
Matching with Friends
A colorful, bouncy, and explosively fun puzzle game that will keep you and your friends entertained for hours. What this does is it improves your ability to recognize patterns.
Scrabble
Who doesn’t love a good game of scrabble? I know I certainly do. Not only does it force you to get creative and think – no dictionaries allowed, but Scrabble is the ultimate way to train your brain because in order to win, you have to stretch your mind and force yourself to build a strategy to defeat your opponent.
Luminosity Brain Trainer
Luminosity Brain Trainer is my absolute favorite way to train your brain. What I like most is that they focus on improving your cognitive abilities through different activities – memory, processing speed, attention and problem solving.
Hidden Objects: Garden of Time
Not only is Hidden Objects: Garden of Time a strategy game, but it forces you to pay attention and process different on-screen objects. It’s also great at improving your memory because while you are searching for hidden objects, you also must try to remember which hidden objects you need to search and locate to improve your score.
Overall, these are my favorite mobile apps to help train your brain. Are there any others you like? Maybe a good crossword puzzle or 500+ piece puzzle? Leave a comment below with your favorites.