Train Your Brain

Train Your Brain

            Your brain is an amazing work of biological machinery with the ability to compute, file process, and understand the many complexities of the world around us. It has the ability to function on several different levels, focusing on one stimuli and then quickly shifting focus to the next, all while functioning under our subconscious. There are many hypotheses on how our attention relates and interacts with our cognition, and Dr. Zabelina from Northwestern University focuses primarily on two on her study, “Short-term attentional preservation associated with real-life creative achievement.” One hypothesis states that highly creative people are flexible at switching their attention. The second hypothesis states that creative people exhibit the ability for sustained attention. Her results from both the experiments demonstrated that real-world creative acts relates to increased level of sustained attention even if it comes with the cost of preservation in some occurrences. However, newer research from the University of Montreal indicates that targeted brain training may in fact help an individual multitask better. An individual can actually preform everyday tasks such as cooking, watching a movie, browsing the web or driving and train the flexibility of their brain. Divergent thinking is a phenomena that can actually be trained, and therefore just like an individual works on strengthening their body, they should also work on strengthening their brain. One of my favorite ways to work on working on my attention is by playing video games. It may seem obscure, but video games train your reaction time, your hand-eye coordination, your foresight and numerous other levels of thinking. If I had to choose between working out my brain by doing logic problems or by playing video games, gaming wins 11 times out of 10.

            The team in the University of Montreal explain how mental exercises improve our cognitive ability. The first obstacle in their research was understanding the association between the type of cognitive training preformed and the resulting effects on the brain. They needed to better understand the ways to activate certain areas of the brain and target these areas to get specific results. Researchers are now able to map our functioning to specific areas of our brain, using functional magnetic resonance imaging to assess the impact of training on various types of attentional tasks. The training increases functioning in the middle prefrontal region, which is the area known to be responsible for divergent thinking.

            Now that we know how cognitive training affects the portion of the brain that controls multitasking and attentional flexibility, individuals can work on finding the right combination of plasticity and attention control. Just as working out can improve one’s health and increases one’s life, cognitive training can increase mental life and cognitive functionality as one grows older. With Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Schizophrenia, and other mental disorders around, shouldn’t one’ goal be to preserve their cognitive ability for as long as possible?  

Universite de Montreal. (2014, August 20). Targeted brain training may help you multitask better. ScienceDaily. Retrieved December 12, 2014             from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140820091050.htm

Zabelina DL and Beeman M (2013) Short-term attentional perseveration associated with real-life creative achievement.Front. Psychol. 4:191. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00191