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Video games get quite the bad media reputation these days. Frequently cited as the cause of a range of maladies in younger generations, they’re blamed for everything from obesity to an increased penchant for violence.

But a lot of studies are surfacing in recent years that counteract these claims, and state that gaming can be beneficial for your brain. In fact, gaming has a large impact on expanding and sharpening your cognitive abilities.

How Gaming Helps Your Brain

Let’s look at the ways gaming can positively affect your brain functions.

• Sharper attention and focus: A 2012 study by Green and Bavelier found that playing action-based video games improves your spatial attention. This is the ability to locate a target when a bunch of stimuli are present. It also includes your ability to keep track of that target. Gaming trains your mind to discard unwanted spatial information and stay on a single track, which improves focus.
• Faster reflex and response time: Gaming hones skills like hand-eye coordination and audio-visual information processing. Your “fight-or-flight” response works overtime and, as a result, your response to non-game situations also becomes quicker. Video games train your brain to quickly assess and respond to game scenarios. This then improves your response time outside of gaming scenarios.
• Improves memory: Playing video games improves your ability to recognize and differentiate between patterns. Pattern recognition is a sign of improved long-term memory. It also improves your working and short-term memory by giving your brain solid practice in retaining information. Longer storylines and complicated tasks force your brain to stay engaged and recall various details at random intervals. This is a fantastic way to practice strengthening your memory.

• Better decision-making skills: Long-term exposure to gaming can improve your decision-making ability. Studies show it trains your mind to pick-and-choose between relevant and irrelevant stimuli. This strengthens your decision-making skills, as it largely depends on your ability to choose between desired and undesired actions. And because video games present decisions under time constraints, you’re forced to make decisions fast and under pressure. As you get more practice with this skill, you’ll notice decisions become easier in other areas of your life.
• Increased flexibility: Multiple studies have shown that playing video games increases your ability to switch rapidly and without error between tasks that have conflicting demands. This is an excellent skill for handling busy schedules and increased demands for your attention at work and home. Multitasking is a bit of myth because you’re really task-switching. But being flexible helps you switch between these tasks easier and faster without losing focus or concentration.
• Fluid problem-solving skills: Gaming has a positive impact on a lot of brain functions that are important for your day-to-day life. A lot of these take place in the area of your brain responsible for executive functionality. Things like attention span, working memory, mental flexibility, reasoning skills, and problem-solving are all examples of how executive function operates through your ability to “get things done”. Video games rely on the use of these skills to finish the game. Gaming also promotes creative thinking and quick response time, which are crucial skills for problem solving.
• Slows mental decline: Your mental flexibility and memory decline naturally with age. Several studies have found that long-term exposure to video games and gaming practices can keep your brain flexible for a longer period because of constant mental exercise. This helps keep your neural pathways functional and learning new skills in various games encourages neuroplasticity. All of this results in an agile, working brain even in advanced age, which improves your quality of life in the sunset years.

Conclusion

Too much of anything is bad, and the same goes for gaming. If playing video games causes you to ignore real-world responsibilities, then that hobby is a problem. But as an exercise to enjoy in your free time, gaming has multiple positive effects on your brain and cognitive abilities. Like anything, playing games in moderation can be fun and promote brain health. So, next time you feel like going on a quest, pick up that controller and game to glory.

If you’re worried about how much technology impacts your life, watch this video for tips on how to digitally detox:

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Our modern world is run by technology, specifically digital technology. Most of us live on the Grid. You are able to read what I’m writing here precisely because you are part of this grid life, which is defined by the digital and technological experience. And the experience changes every day.

One of our enduring problems with technology is that it changes too fast. Humans – just like any other species on Earth – take time to evolve. And when our slow-evolving mind meets fast-evolving tech, it is often the mind that gets short-changed. Technology has a lot of negative effects on our brain, and they can become serious and harmful over time.

Here are some of the most significant ways technology can affect and even change your brain. Read on!

Memory

How many phone numbers can you rattle off just from the top of your mind? Chances are, not many, probably two or three of them. Ask older generations who were less exposed to technology though, and you’ll find they remember a lot more of them.

The reason is, we are increasingly dependent on memory-aiding tech. Phone and computer memories are replacing our actual memories, and that in turn is decreasing our brain’s overall capacity for remembering. This process is called ‘cognitive offloading’, and it happens every time you consult the internet to check on some information. The more you rely on technology to act as your memory, the less confident you’ll be using your own over time.

Attention

Digital media and technology have increased our capacity to squeeze more work into a shorter span of time. Mobile devices regularly advertise as a solution for continuing or checking in on your office work while spending time elsewhere, such as with your family or on a vacation. Digital media, in short, pushes us to multitask and touts greater connectivity as the key to it.

But our brain doesn’t really work like that. The human brain works best when it can give a job it’s full attention. When we try to multitask, our capacity for attention doesn’t automatically increase to accommodate all the tasks. Rather, it divides the available amount. Which means you actually have less attention to spare for each of your tasks.

When you do this regularly, i.e. make divided attention into a habit, your natural capacity for attention decreases. After a point, your attention begins to decrease even quicker on each task you set for yourself. Over time, your natural attention span is lowered. Without focus and attention, however, no task can be done well. So a lower attention span essentially means failing to give your best to all the tasks which require your attention.

Abstract Thought

Over-reliance on technology affects another crucial facet of the human mind; the ability to think abstractly. Recent studies point to the fact that our exposure to digital modes of communication is making us more inclined to prefer concrete details over abstract interpretation.

This preference, in turn, leads to an overall decrease in our capacity to effectively interpret disjointed information. Our ability to think abstractly is what allows us to put value to our experiences. Lessening of that ability is harmful not just to our brains, but to society at large as well.

Human Bonding

When abstraction lessens, so does our ability to imagine. And one of the core functions of human society is imagination. Imagination allows us to build trusted relationships between strangers, develop communications, and establish common structures and rules. Basically, when we lose the ability to imagine, we stop understanding the experiences of other people.

Digital media and technology provide us with information about other people, but information is not the only way we learn about others. Visual cues, body language, touch, sound – all of this plays a significant role in building perception. When we see only two-dimensional information about a person, we miss out on all the other details, and our ability to imagine a shared experience is lessened.

Conclusion

Digital technology has been a revolutionary intervention in the history of human civilization. But if not handled with mindful caution and care, this could very well lead to a breakdown of many crucial features of what makes us human. Being mindful of our engagement with technology is the need of the hour. Perhaps we should give it a little more thought, for the sake of our brains.

Stressed? Angry? Panicked? Can’t sleep? Take a deep breath – goes the automatic advice in each of these situations. Humans have been using controlled breathing as a go-to solution for a number of problems for so long that it’s almost a cliché now. But as the saying goes, every cliché has some kernel of truth, and the deep breathing cliché is no exception.

Recent studies in neuroscience reveal the fascinating effects controlled breathing can have on your brain, and the many ways you can use it to your benefit. Read on!

What is controlled breathing?

Breathing is the most natural activity that our body performs, and it does so without thinking. Most of the things we do as humans are learned in our infancy; even the smallest actions like sitting up, grabbing things, walking, speaking. But breathing comes pre-programmed in us, and so it is for most animals.

But try to teach a dog to hold its breath for the count of five and you will fail. Your kid, on the other hand, would do it easily. Humans are one of the extremely few species on earth that can actually establish control over their respiratory functions; we can hold or release our breath at will, we can be aware of our breathing.

There are many functions of our body that come involuntarily to us – like digestion and blood circulation – and are controlled by the unconscious mind. Breathing is also a function of the unconscious mind, but it is different from those others. We cannot regulate our blood flow simply by wishing to do so; but we can regulate our breathing at will.

What it does to your body

You can control and regulate your breath in any manner you like really but the manner that helps us and is usually meant by the term ‘controlled breathing’ is a full oxygen exchange – you take in more oxygen and let out more carbon dioxide.

This is usually done in three steps:

• Breathing in on a rhythmic count through the nose
• Holding the breath for about the same time
• Breathing out through the mouth on a slower or longer count than breathing in

Full oxygen exchange systematically activates the parasympathetic nervous system of our brain. What this does is essentially manages the stress response in our brain, which is a product of the sympathetic nervous system.

How it benefits you

Reduces stress – We are generally in a heightened state of stress during the day. A lot of things we encounter every day can cause our brain to go into fight-or-flight mode, and not always necessarily. Controlled breathing artificially activates our relaxation response, thereby automatically toning down the heightened stress response. This is where the advice of ‘take a deep breath’ comes from.

Lowers anxiety and deepens focus – A direct result of continued heightened stress is anxiety, and while a little anxiety acts as a natural alarm system, continued exposure to it is seriously harmful to our brains. Now the route through which controlled breathing affects our parasympathetic nerve system is the vagus nerve, which acts basically as a calming mechanism. The vagus nerve releases a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine which is directly linked to increased focus and calmness. Controlled breathing increases the flow of acetylcholine in our brains and thereby also increases our sense of calm and focus.

Helps in brain growth – Controlled breathing can literally increase the size of your brain, and the effect is particularly pronounced in older people. Controlled breathing is a crucial part of meditation exercises, and regular practice of meditation has been directly linked with actual growth in the brain’s gray matter.

Conclusion

Breathing is one of the things that comes most naturally to us. But it is also one over which we can have voluntary control. So practicing mindful and controlled breathing is one of the best and easiest things you can do for your brain, starting right about now! Give it a try.

What is the first thing that you associate with the phrase ‘brain damage’?

Most of us will think in terms of an accidental or unforeseen head injury that impairs a person’s cognitive abilities. But you don’t need an accident to damage your brain. The increasing amount of information that we are bombarded with every day has the potential to do the same.

How so?

• Our brain changes physically every time we learn something new. In our brain, all information is channeled through neural pathways. When we learn something new, our brain either opens up new pathways connecting a new set of neurons, or makes an existing pathway stronger with more connections along the same route.

• Not everything we learn is good for our brain. Junk foods are edible, but they do not make us healthy. Similarly, a lot of the information that we come across everyday doesn’t actually make us smarter. If the data we gather is faulty, our reasoning based on that data will be faulty too, and so will our actions based on that reasoning.

This is ‘junk learning’. Just as junk food can make you sick, junk learning can make you dumb. Even more worrying still, the more your brain is fed junk learning the more prone it will be to pick up further junk learning because of the pathways that have already been opened in your brain.

With too much information available at our fingertips now, we are more and more at risk of being swayed by junk learning. So let us identify a few factors that lead to it, and how to get past them.

Change your approach to learning from knowledge acquisition to knowledge investment.

Most of what we know as ‘facts’ are changeable. Our ideas are based on facts that we learned in the course of our formal education, stretching over a good part of two decades. But science has not been sitting idle all these years. It has made strides and in those strides many of our ‘established facts’ have been debunked or updated.

Don’t accumulate facts; invest time in understanding the underlying principles and methods. Learn things that offer long-lasting lessons instead of just current trends. Invest in building adaptability and reasoning skills, so that even if you come across unexpected facts you are capable of assimilating and judging them correctly.

Assume you know nothing.

In 1999, psychologists Justin Kruger and David Dunning introduced what is called the Dunning-Kruger Effect. The idea is: we are most confident about learning anything new right before we start learning it. The more we actually learn, the more complexity and nuance we encounter, and the more unsure we become. This causes a loss of confidence, and subsequently of interest in many of us.

Ready your mind for new things by assuming a clean-slate mindset. Always assume that you know absolutely nothing about the domain before beginning to learn; that way you’ll be protected from the discouragement your brain receives once the threshold proves too difficult.

Avoid confirmation bias.

We are all guilty of confirmation bias. This is a tendency to look for and believe information that confirms what we already think. Our brain resists new learning by employing confirmation bias because making new neural pathways is energy-consuming, and the brain’s instinct is to get things done with as little energy as possible.

Teach yourself to listen in order to understand, not to argue. Several educationalists, philosophers, and psychologists of the past century have stressed that we learn a lot more by proving ourselves wrong than by proving ourselves right. Testing our acquired knowledge through independent verification and engaging with sources holding differing opinions are both crucial for our brain growth.

Avoid ‘celebrity’ influence.

There is a term called ‘Halo Effect’ in psychology. It refers to our inherent bias that makes us trust a person on one thing simply because they are an expert on a completely different thing. For example, when we trust a politician’s opinion on matters of climate over scientific studies, or a scientist’s opinion on foreign policy over a diplomat.

Before you acquire new information, always check whether the source is experienced or knowledgeable enough in that field to provide expert information.

Conclusion

Learning is a lengthy process; it eats away at both our time and energy reserves, which is why most of us are resistant to learning. And yet constant learning is the only way we grow in our lives and careers. So when you learn, make sure not to do so in vain by feeding your brain cognitive junk.

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In this present day and age, journaling is considered a quaint hobby at best, a waste of time at worst. We live in an era dominated by audio-visuals and writing is an increasingly specialized endeavor, reserved for and delegated to professionals.

And yet we find, all through history, scores and scores of successful people, inventors, artists, entrepreneurs, and presidents have all kept their own journals religiously. What is it that connects the keen and creative mind to journal keeping?

A lot, actually. Turns out, our ancestors figured out long ago what scientists have gathered verifiable evidence for only recently – journaling has incredible benefits for your brain, as well as your overall physical and emotional health.

Whether you are just jotting down useful information, keeping tabs on your goals, or simply pouring out your thoughts as they come – the very exercise of writing down what’s in your head helps you to unlock a lot of potential your brain would otherwise leave untapped. Read on!

What does journaling do for our brain?

Strengthens memory

Writing does wonders for your memory. It helps you build better comprehension skills, thereby leading to better recall. Also, it has a direct impact on your working memory. When you record your thoughts in the written form, you are going over them again and again in your brain as your thoughts are much faster than your writing speed could ever be. This builds a better capacity for working memory and instant recall.

Better IQ

Several studies claim that writing regularly can have a direct correlation to improvement in your intelligence quotient. Among other things, writing forces you to think and express in established language forms, and that requires new vocabulary acquisition. Turns out, one of the biggest indicators of your IQ score is the breadth of your vocabulary.

Increases focus

Journaling is one of the best ways to sharpen and streamline your focus on anything – be it a long-term goal or the study material at hand. Here’s a tip: get into the practice of scribbling down any idea, information, or thought that you think may come in handy at a later time. Writing it all down embeds it deeper into your brain. You’ll remember why you need to do this thing or that a lot more easily, thereby keeping you focused.

Cognitive processing

Writing has incredible benefits for our cognitive processing and decision-making capabilities. Writing down your thoughts forces you to articulate them in a different medium. You have automatically started processing information when you write it down. It adds to your understanding, and helps clear up any vagueness those ideas may have had while just running through your mind.

Relieves stress

We live in the Information Technology era, and our minds have to take in a mammoth amount of information every day. It is truly a challenge to take in such an amount of information and then to process it and put it to work. The discord between our information-retention capacity and processing speed can lead to huge amounts of stress and poorer decision making on our part. Writing can help you to offload extra information from your memory, keep a lighter head, and to have the luxury of revisiting information or thoughts from some time ago. This significantly relieves the stress and anxiety associated with multi-tasking.

Boosts creativity

Writing is inherently a creative function, but it helps you to unlock your creative potential as well. Journal keeping helps us with lateral thinking, and allows us to see and make connections between different ideas which we wouldn’t be able to see in our heads alone.

Improves your mood

Journaling makes you happy. Especially, writing down your trauma and negative experiences goes a long way toward identifying and facing the issues you are struggling with. It gives us an outlet, thereby lightening our minds and improving our moods. It also helps us look at our emotional issues from a different perspective, thereby improving our emotional intelligence.

Conclusion

Journal keeping gets a less-than-favorable reputation, as though it is only for overly emotional people. But the habits of many illustrious people all over the world and recent science-based evidence tells us that this is one of the best ways to keep your brain from burnout, process your emotions and decisions, and make sense of the world around you. So take out your beautiful stationary today, and set to writing down your thoughts. Your brain will thank you.

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Have trouble focusing on one task for long? Attention span getting shorter and shorter? You are not alone. We seem to be suffering a deficit of attention on a global scale these days. The mind’s nature is to wander, and often it is difficult to make it sit in one place to do what we need it to do.

Fortunately, with some practice, you can actually control your concentration abilities and bring your attention back where it belongs.

Here are 4 mental exercises that can help you get your focus back.

1. Counting exercises

• Take a random book and start counting the words in one paragraph. Don’t count them aloud and don’t point fingers at each word. Do it a couple of times to get the count right. Then count the words in two paragraphs. When you see you are able to do two paragraphs easily, increase the number of paragraphs.
• Count backward from 100 to 1, again, mentally and not aloud. Repeat the exercise. When you are comfortable with this range, increase it to 500, and so on.
• Count backwards with variations. For example, skip the numbers by fives, such as 100, 95, 90, 85, etc. When you are comfortable with that, try a harder variation, like a count of three – 100, 97, 94, etc.

2. Observation exercises

• Take any physical object – a fruit, a toy, a book, anything – and focus your entire mind on it. Observe its characters and features carefully and meticulously. For instance, if it is an apple, note what the color is, how red or how green, if the shape is crooked or smooth, the texture, the smell of it. Simultaneously, keep your mind from straying toward other random thoughts. For example, your mind might stray from the apple to your grocery bills, but don’t think of those things. If your mind strays, gently bring it back to the contemplation of the apple. Start by observing for 3-5 minutes, and increase the time to 10-15 minutes in phases.
• When you master focused observation, try observing without thinking. When we think, we are usually having a conversation in our minds. We think in languages, and those language words bring out images from our memory stores. In this exercise, you try to observe without any kind of talking going on in your head. Don’t tell yourself that the apple is red or green or smooth or crooked. Just observe without thinking anything. Increase the observation time slowly.

3. Visualizing exercises

• After you have observed an object thoroughly for a few minutes, close your eyes and try to visualize it, exactly as you have observed it, from different sides and angles. Try to imagine its texture, smell, shape, color, everything that you have noted with your eyes open. If the image tends to blur, open your eyes, observe for two more minutes, then close them and try again.

4. Focusing exercises

• Sit in a quiet place and choose a word to focus on. It can be anything, as long as it has some positive or inspiring connotation for you – like ‘love’, ‘success’, ‘joy’, ‘courage’, etc. It can also be a phrase or a motto, whatever works for you. Now repeat this word or phrase constantly in your mind with complete attention for 5 minutes. Try to keep your mind focused on just the word/phrase and nothing else. When you find that comfortable, increase the time to 10 minutes.

Now, just like physical exercises, mental exercises too need a bit of preparation and warm-up. Follow these ground rules before starting any mental exercise.

• Choose a comfortable place to sit with minimal disturbances, visual or auditory.
• Sit with your spine straight. You may sit cross-legged in a Yoga posture, or just sit in a chair. What matters is that you sit straight and comfortably.
• Increase the intensity of the exercises slowly, and move to a bigger count only when you can comfortably and easily perform the previous amount.
• Remember these exercises are not about success, but consistency. If you can’t get your focus back after 3 days, you are not supposed to. Keep at it and the effects will show.

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Conclusion

Our mind is no different from our body. The parts get rusty if we don’t work them out. With so many things screaming for our attention these days, our concentration often does not get the workout it deserves. So give your focus that extra boost with these simple exercises.