“Use it or lose it” is certainly the name of the game when it comes to cognitive training. Accumulating evidence even indicates that proper mentally stimulating activities reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease. With age, naturally, we all experience declines in our various cognitive abilities.
Initial decline generally begins in the cognitive areas of memory and divided attention, specifically the speed at which it takes us to process and react to information. With aging adults, this decline becomes even more apparent, leading to increased difficulties in performing even the simplest day-to-day tasks.
Until recently, cognitive training was practiced exclusively by people suffering from severe mental damage or cognitive skill deficiencies.
We now know that each individual can benefit from cognitive training, provided that this training is accurately adapted to treat each person’s own specific needs.
Cognitive training, or "brain" training, is similar to physical fitness training and physiotherapy. For instance, just as sports teams provide their athletes with gyms for training and physiotherapy on a regular basis, routine cognitive training is also a fundamental necessity.
Furthermore, just like professional athletes focus on training specific physical abilities and/or muscles individually, and for different purposes (i.e. muscle strength, elasticity etc.), the key to effective brain training also demands zeroing in on one particular cognitive area at a time, and within controlled time frames.
Take a basketball player for example. Far from limiting his or her training to playing a series of games, their workout routine includes a variety of physical fitness exercises, perhaps physiotherapy, as well as different drills like running, dribbling the ball, passing, shooting at the basket and so forth.
The rationale behind cognitive training is similar to other forms of training, like sports, and due to the architecture of the brain. When our cognitive system becomes acquainted with simple tasks, it constructs "expert routines." As such, we often develop enough expertise to carry out certain tasks automatically.
Much the way our bodies are composed of muscles, bones and joints etc., our cognitive systems also comprise a complex series of various processes and sub processes, such as memory (short term, long term), attention, perception and so on.
Mind360’s training programs are developed using the latest cognitive science research in order to create training systems designed to enhance one single process at a time, such as different sub categories of working memory, attention and so forth.
Moreover, just as conventional physical and mental training regimens tend to be tedious and mind-numbing, the entire mind360 site was intentionally designed to provide effective training in fun and pleasurable ways.
