May 2021 New: 2 Unique Brain Games for Senior Citizens

Readers who are looking for effective brain games may find this article helpful.

Especially for senior citizens, learn how the abacus can be used for effective learning.

 

I'm the author of this article and I'm a qualified abacus teacher, answering questions from around the world online abacus and various questions from online-soroban.com students.

Table of contents

The elders of society generally like to relax and be laid back.

One of the problems with that kind of lifestyle is perpetual boredom.

Boredom is something that builds up in the head and if its level becomes too much, it can become unbearable too.

A good way to exercise their brain in the older ages and keep that boredom away are the multitude of thinking games that the elders can play right from their comfortable place.

Not only do such games help kill boredom but also help the oldies stay mentally active. Let us learn more.
 

1-1.Brain Games for Senior Citizens: Does Our Brain Age as We Age?

Scientists have grappled with the question for many centuries now.

Finally, our modern medicine is advanced enough that we can answer this question with confidence.

The answer to the question is a yes, our head does age as we age.

Let us see what this entails.

The effects of old age on the brain can be seen in pretty much every elder.

No matter how smart they may have been in their prime, old age does cause some decline in their mental faculties.

Research shows that the size of our head decreases as we age, so basically, our brain shrinks a bit in size as we age.

This causes loss of neurons, and the thinking organ is no longer as functional.

Other than the physical nature, the mental processes are also affected a great deal.

Memory is probably the most affected aspect.

As we age, our long-term memory starts to fade away.

We are no longer able to recall our younger days with as much clarity.

Short-term memory is also greatly affected.

Old people often forget where they kept their glasses two minutes ago, for example.

Other than memory, focus and mathematical ability is also affected.

Old people can’t focus for long hours as young people can, this means they have trouble doing simple tasks like reading newspapers, following news on tv, understanding long sentences and others.

Loss of mathematical ability is also seen frequently.

This causes problems in dealing with money, buying and selling items, maintaining healthy personal finance, doing their own insurance, and others.
 

1-2.Different Brain Games for Senior Citizens

One of the easiest ways to keep the brain properly functioning is by using it and keeping it engaged.

Let us look at some good ways in which we can engage our heads.

Read constantly. Reading requires the use of multiple parts of the brain at the same time.

We use our creative side to understand the words, our right brain to associate them and visualize them, and other parts of the head to put it all together.

Reading is therefore the easiest sort of exercise one can do to keep one engaged and properly functioning.

Meditating is another great way to engage thinking.

It might sound counterintuitive to some people because meditations require one to do nothing, and we absolutely do nothing.

It might sound a bit unintuitive that engaging activities require us to do absolutely nothing, but it can be hard to do nothing when we think about it.

We can go for simple meditations or eastern meditation techniques if we are looking for more advanced practices.

Talking to people is another great activity.

Talking requires the use of a number of different parts of the brain.

We have to listen, process, formulate a reply and respond back, all of which are immensely complex processes and thus help engage the brain.

If you are not into casual or small talk, try debating groups or moot court competitions, they generally provide a lot of verbal stimulation.
 

1-3. Learn How the Abacus Can Be Used as Brain Games for Senior Citizens

Abacus - the simple calculating tool can have some magic effects.

One of those effects is how it can radically slow down the aging of the brain.

Let us try to understand this by breaking it down into simple points.

The one thing that can slow down the aging process of the brain is actively using it.

There is no better remedy for an unused brain than simply using it.

Think of the thinking organ as a muscle. It gets stronger the more we use it.

Using the abacus requires the usage of the abacus on multiple levels.

Let's start with the basic hand movements.

When we move the beads up and down, we have to actively make a choice, and then we have to actively act upon it.

This uses up some of the processing power.

Combine this with the number of calculations that are going on in the head.

All of them together make the abacus a very resource-hungry device.

In other words, it costs a lot of skill and dedication to using the abacus.

With the above explanation, we can see how the abacus costs a lot of brainpower, and with that, we can safely say that regular practitioners of the abacus will have their brain aging slowed down to a very low level.

To top it off, Online Soroban's ISHIDO SHIKI allows students from different generations to come together to learn and discover something new.

With easy to understand and engagin classes, your elders will have a great time learning while exercising their brains.

Overall  
We discussed how aging affects a person’s development and growth.

It can be clearly said that brain growth stops after a time and actually the growth becomes negative at a certain age.

The upper limit to brain growth isn’t a universal number, it is different for pretty much everyone but it is a phenomenon that surely does exist.

We also looked at some easy-to-follow ways and methods we can follow easily at home to keep them engaged.

Lastly, we also looked at what role the ancient device abacus plays in this whole.