Interactive Brain Games that Can Improve Mental Health

There’s a common misconception that playing games is a waste of time and children should spend most of their time working hard in school. This fallacy is also seen among adults, who perceive games as kiddy, or a ‘thing of the past’. However, what most people do not understand is the capacity for certain games to train the brain. You see, the brain is essentially a muscle and like all muscles in our bodies, the harder you train them, the stronger they get.

Brain-teasing games like Sudoku enhance one’s memory, response time and logic processing skills.

“The improvements are particularly clear in the speed and accuracy of their performance. In some areas the improvement was quite dramatic,” said Dr. Anne Corbett, lead author and dementia lecturer at the University of Exeter Medical School.

If you’re up for the challenge, here are 9 interactive brain games to improve your brain capacity.

Classic Puzzle Games

Sudoku is a classic number placement game that relies on your short-term memory. Essentially, you have to fill up the blanks with no repeated numbers across rows, columns and groups. Thus, before labelling a spot, you have to think a few steps ahead to ensure that the same number will not appear in the same intersection. This forward-thinking and planning trains your short-term memory.

Beginners of the game should start with the easier puzzles for a boost of confidence. Also, it’s wise to play using a pencil if you’re playing offline as mistakes are easily made.

Another classic puzzle is Crosswords, which not only engages in memories of the verbal language, but it also enhances your knowledge across various dimensions. Like Sudoku, Crosswords can be found online and offline.

Brain-training Apps

Here are a couple of apps that are specifically designed to challenge your brains.

Starting off with Peak, one of the most established brain training and mental fitness programmes. With an array of puzzles, you will never get bored of the app. Furthermore, if you are a competitive person, you can pay a small subscription fee to unlock access to the ranking board to see how you fare against other players and also other premium features.

Another free-app (with in-app purchases) to consider is Elevate. Out of all the apps we have seen so far, this looks the most inclined towards educational purposes, with its focus on reading, writing, speaking, and math. You can customise the game to focus on any of the four disciplines.

If you’re committed to training your brain, perhaps Briangle will be the perfect choice for you. Claiming to have the largest library of game teasers in the world, Briangle is a free website with over 15,000 puzzles to solve which includes but is not limited to optical illusions, codes and ciphers, and trivia quizzes. On top of that, you can also create your own puzzles for others to solve.