Active Aging Presented by Public Health Seattle-King County
Managing your cognitive health is a vital part of maintaining your overall health, especially as you age. Many factors impact cognitive health including genetic, lifestyle, and environmental factors, according to the National Institute on Aging.
Ways to stay on top of brain health include staying physically active, managing high blood pressure, and eating healthy food.
There’s also evidence that staying mentally, physically, and socially active can help keep your brain sharper, longer, according to Dr. Ronald Petersen, director of Mayo Clinic’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center.
How about using brain apps and playing online games? Playing brain apps and games won’t make your brain perfect. However, they can help you stay mentally active – and many of them are fun.
Here’s a list of the best brain apps and online games to boost cognitive function.
To Get Started
You don’t have to be a tech wizard to use any of these brain training apps to work on your mental fitness. To get started:
- Go to the app store on your smartphone, tablet, or computer.
- Type the name of any of the five apps below in the search field.
- Tap on the app to download it to your device.
- Once it’s downloaded, tap the app to open it and access the games.
Remember, the whole point of these games is to have fun while you’re getting a mental workout. If you need help accessing the apps and games, ask a friend, family member, or caregiver.
Luminosity
Luminosity has trained brains for 14 years for over 100 million members. Users can exercise memory, processing speed, and problem-solving skills. And Luminosity’s team of scientists “take tasks from the lab and adapt them into easy-to-learn brain games.”
Research has proven the platform’s efficacy, with over 20 peer-reviewed publications in academic journals using Luminosity games or assessments.
One large trial of 4,715 participants showed the test group using Luminosity five days a week, 15 minutes a day for 10 weeks, versus a control group that did crossword puzzles, which improved their cognitive performance in multiple cognitive assessments.
Designers and scientists teamed up to make Luminosity games equal parts challenging and fun. It’s available on Android and iOS platforms for computers, mobile phones, and tablets. You can opt for free or paid subscription plans.
Peak
Peak offers short, intense brain workouts. A virtual personal trainer named Coach challenges you with new workouts, tracks your progress, and shows you where and how you can improve your skills.
Peak works with scientists who study video game impacts from renowned universities like Cambridge, Yale, and King’s College London. Peak earned Best of Year and Editor’s Choice Awards from both the App Store and Google Play. A Peak Pro subscription provides dozens of tailored workouts and a performance analysis to help you maximize your potential. Fun games exercise your focus, memory, mental agility, and problem-solving skills. Play smarter and push your cognitive skills with Peak.
CogniFit
“CogniFit,” aka “cognitive fitness,” is a catchy name for a brain app. Nearly 5 million people have played over 135 million games to help flex cognitive skills. Psychologists designed these games to train over 20 cognitive functions, such as contextual memory, hand-eye coordination, working memory, planning, concentration, naming, processing speed, recognition, response time, and more.
Neuroscientists created the platform “to help researchers conduct studies in which cognitive analysis is essential” and over 400 institutions are running research studies with CogniFit. This platform also categorizes games into different age groups, including activities specifically tailored to users who are 65+.
In fact, CogniFit’s mental exercise batteries are adapted “to the cognitive limitations or deficits that may appear due to normal or pathological aging.”
A variety of online brain games, like chess, exercise skills like spatial perception, naming, planning, and updating.
Memorado
While some cognitive changes occur naturally with age, research shows that older adults can still form new memories, learn new skills, and improve language and vocabulary skills, according to the National Institute on Aging.
Memorado works on sharpening your IQ with personalized brain games and mental exercises. You can play over 20 games to hone different cognitive skills such as mental speed, concentration, memory, logical reasoning, mindfulness, and more.
The app supports all ages and skill levels. It offers daily IQ tests and tracks progress on individual skill groups, highlights areas of improvement, and allows you to compare your performance with others. The application is available on the App Store or Google Play.
Elevate
Elevate is a well-rounded brain training app that helps users improve a variety of cognitive and analytical skills, including reading, writing, speaking, math, concentration, focus, and memory skills. You can consider it a digital classroom of sorts – where you work on different learning activities while playing engaging games.
Elevate has won Apple’s “App of the Year” award and helped over 50 million people improve their mathematical, communication, and memory skills.
Spending time with these brain training apps will help you exercise vital parts of your brain that can positively affect your cognitive health.
Active Aging is presented by Public Health- Seattle & King County. Public Health- Seattle & King County recognizes the important and untold stories of innovation, service, and sacrifice by the Black community and supports efforts to improve equity and achieve social justice. We want everyone to get health insurance and access health care. Visit www.kingcounty.gov/health for health insurance, flu and COVID-19 testing locations.