13+ Best Brain Exercises to Strengthen Your Mind & Memory

Brain exercises are an excellent way to keep your mind sharp regardless of age and improve memory, reasoning, creativity, and problem-solving skills.

In addition, they are fun, simple, and often collaborative. As a result, you can also improve your social skills, empathy, and teamwork, as well as spend some quality time with your friends and family.

In this article, we will introduce you to some tried-and-true brain exercises and clarify what specific areas of cognition they target and why keeping your brain active should be your priority.

So, let’s get started.

Key Takeaways

• Brain exercises are activities designed to boost your cognition and prevent the cognitive decline often associated with old age.
• Brain exercises improve memory and concentration, reduce the risk of dementia, and boost creativity and cognitive health.
• Some of the best brain exercises include solving jigsaw puzzles and math problems, playing card games, chess, or musical instruments, and learning new dance moves and languages.

What Are Brain Exercises?

Brain exercises are mental activities that aim to maintain or improve your cognitive abilities and keep your little gray cells sharp for as long as possible.

In some ways, brain exercises work similarly to physical exercises, only they don’t target muscles. Instead, they challenge your brain to push past its limits, consider familiar concepts from new angles, and improve its capacity for retaining and processing information.

Considering the range of functions they have, brain exercises also come in many types and forms.

For instance, some exercises target your working or long-term memory; others prioritize logic and reasoning; and still others improve concentration and attention span. In addition, most manage to hone your problem-solving skills and boost your general intelligence.

Although brain exercises are primarily recommended for the older population, which might be dealing with some degree of cognitive decline, anyone can use them to sharpen their mind. In fact, they might be particularly beneficial to children who are yet to reach their cognitive peak.

4 Key Benefits of Brain Exercises

The key benefit of brain exercises is that they keep your brain healthy and help maintain its normal function even as you start aging. In addition, they support children’s brain development and may even lead to an increase in IQ.

Aside from that, here are some other key benefits:

• Improved memory. Many brain exercises target this cognitive ability specifically, increasing your working memory capacity and boosting your recall speed.
• Creativity. Brain exercises often involve riddles, puzzles, and brain teasers that can’t be solved without a sprinkle of creativity. And the more developed your creativity, the better you are at problem-solving and lateral thinking, both of which are crucial skills in everyday life.
• Laser-sharp focus. Almost all brain exercises, even those that don’t target concentration specifically, require some degree of focus. As a result, your concentration and attention span will grow and improve over time.
• Reduced risk of dementia. Regularly challenging your brain keeps dementia at bay, or at least delays it by up to five years, as it doesn’t let your brain atrophy.

Top 14 Brain Exercises to Try

The following are 14 brain exercises and games you should try if you want to boost your attention span, focus, memory, pattern recognition, reasoning, and strategic thinking.

#1. Solve a Jigsaw Puzzle

an image of a jigsaw puzzle almost solved that helps with brain exercises

Jigsaw puzzles are excellent distractions and stress relievers that can keep you busy for hours. But unlike many other time-consuming distractions, they also stimulate your brain and improve your visual-spatial intelligence, concentration, and problem-solving skills.

In addition, you won’t feel like you’ve been wasting time once you complete a 1,000-piece jigsaw. Instead, you’ll feel a sense of accomplishment, which is always beneficial for mental health.

The best part is that jigsaw puzzles can be either a solitary or collaborative activity. In other words, you can turn completing a puzzle into a fun project with your family or friends and spend quality time together as a result.

#2. Play Card Games

an image of cards from king to 9

Even with all the available video and board game options, card games still remain one of the most popular ways to pass the time with friends. That’s probably due to their simplicity—they don’t require any special setup or complicated explanations. All you need is a deck of cards, and you’re good to go.

That said, card games aren’t just fun; they are also excellent brain exercise. After all, they frequently involve strategic thinking, problem-solving, and numerical reasoning. They also demand your full attention, which boosts your ability to concentrate.

#3. Do Math

an image of math problem used as brain exercises

Although math may not be many people’s idea of fun, it’s one of the best brain exercises for students and those looking to improve their cognition. Grab a textbook, brush up on the basics, and start solving problems, increasing the difficulty after each.

If doing math in a traditional way unpleasantly reminds you of school days, you can try a new approach with math tricks. They make math more digestible and fun, yet they still train your logical-mathematical intelligence and mental agility as much as regular math problems do.

#4. Do Crosswords

an image of a crossword

Research has shown that solving crosswords regularly can lead to a slower age-related shrinkage of the brain. Basically, crosswords keep your mind agile even as you get older, ensuring that your cognitive abilities remain relatively intact.

Considering that they engage different parts of your brain, that’s not too surprising. However, it’s particularly interesting that they create brand new connections between different brain areas by linking concepts that weren’t previously linked.

As a result, crosswords strengthen your reasoning and deduction skills, as well as your ability to make associations.

#5. Play Online Brain Teasers

an image of brain teasers as brain exercises

Brain teasers are mini-puzzles or riddles that can only be solved if you think outside the box or consider various viewpoints. As a result, they are excellent at developing lateral thinking and boosting mental agility and creativity.

These days, brain games and teasers are pretty easy to find online, both with solutions and without them. In fact, here is one example to get you started:

A man stands on one side of the river, his dog on the other. The man calls the dog, and it immediately crosses the river without getting wet or using a bridge or a boat. How is this possible?

Answer: The river was frozen.

#6. Try Sudoku

a person solving a sudoku

Sudoku, a Japanese puzzle game requiring you to fill a 9x9 grid with numbers from 1 to 9, has taken the world by storm and become one of the most popular adult brain exercises.

Nowadays, there are many available variations, but they all have the same beneficial effect on your cognition. In fact, there’s hardly an area sudoku doesn’t target; it boosts numerical reasoning and logical thinking, improves working memory, and enhances concentration and problem-solving skills.

#7. Take a Practice IQ Test

an image of a test answer sheet and the importance of brain exercises

IQ tests are designed to measure your logical and deductive reasoning, working memory, problem-solving skills, and pattern recognition. As a result, typical IQ test tasks also make for excellent brain exercises.

Of course, no one expects you to repeatedly take the official IQ test just to exercise your brain. But practice IQ tests are readily available and easy to come across, giving you an opportunity to test your abilities and train your mind.

#8. Play Chess

an image of a person playing chess

The positive effect of chess on the brain can’t be stressed enough—it’s been proven time and time again that chess boosts logical and strategic thinking, improves numerical reasoning, and enhances problem-solving and memory. After all, it’s not a coincidence that most chess grandmasters have high IQs.

However, the benefits don’t stop there. Although it’s primarily a mind game, chess is also a social activity that introduces you to new people and helps you develop good social skills.

Moreover, it teaches empathy and mutual understanding by forcing you to step into your opponent’s shoes and consider their perspective.

#9. Learn New Dance Moves

an image of a women dancing for brain exercises

Dancing is highly recommended for those who want to improve their bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, as it helps you develop an awareness of your own body and its relation to its surroundings.

But did you know that dancing can also be a fantastic brain exercise for memory? Learning choreography requires memorizing the moves and then recalling them every time you want to execute the dance.

Eventually, your muscle memory will take over, and you’ll perform your routine even without thinking. Until then, though, your working memory will get plenty of exercise.

#10. Learn a Foreign Language

an image of a word on a phone

Learning a foreign language is similar to brain gymnastics, as it forces your mind to stretch beyond what it knows, commit new words and rules to memory, and quickly synthesize the new knowledge into coherent sentences.

This process is by no means simple, but it’s very beneficial for the brain and verbal-linguistic intelligence. Each new language builds new connections in your brain, allowing you to think more flexibly and creatively and come up with solutions you’d otherwise never consider.

#11. Use Your Non-Dominant Hand

A person showing his hands and using non-dominant hand as brain exercises

Switching to your non-dominant hand may seem like a pointless hassle, but it’s surprisingly effective at training your mind to think outside the box. In some way, it’s like keeping your brain on its toes, forcing it to stay active and focused throughout the day.

So, for example, you could spend an hour or two each day performing everyday tasks with your non-dominant hand. If you’re feeling particularly confident, feel free to do it for one whole day—that’s entirely up to you. You may not be efficient at first, but your dexterity and cognitive flexibility will improve over time.

#12. Draw a Map From Memory

an image of notebook and map accessories on a map

Do you feel that you know your hometown like the back of your hand? If that’s the case, put your memory to the test by drawing a map of it without using any visual aids. Make sure to include as many details as possible, and then compare your work with an actual map to see how well you’ve done.

You can repeat this exercise with various places—for example, draw the layout of your house or workplace from memory. The more frequently you do it, the better your working memory will become, and you’ll be more likely to pay attention to details in your surroundings.

#13. Play an Instrument

an image of people playing instrument as brain exercises

Aside from being a fun and productive pastime activity, learning to play an instrument is also incredibly healthy for your brain. It benefits nearly all cognitive functions, increases your musical intelligence, and lowers the risk of cognitive decline by up to 64%.

In addition, musical training benefits both hemispheres of the brain, boosting your logical thinking and creativity. As a result, you’ll notice an overall increase in your processing speed as well as your IQ score.

#14. Do Memory Recall Exercises

an image of a girl looking at her phone

Memory recall exercises are simple and don't require you to use any props aside from a pen, paper, and your brain.

Basically, you need to write down a list of items, numbers, phrases, or anything else that comes to mind. It could, for instance, be your shopping list or to-do list—that’s entirely up to you. Then, try to memorize as many items on the list as possible and set the paper aside for about an hour.

Once the time is up, put your brain to the test. Recall as many items as you can and write them down on a new list. After you’re done, compare the two lists to see how much you’ve gotten right.

At first, your result might not be stellar, but the more you use this brain exercise, the better it will become. Soon enough, you’ll be able to go shopping without a list and not forget a single item!

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Final Thoughts

Even if you feel like your mind is in good shape, these brain exercises are free and simple, so it doesn’t hurt to give them a try. Many are fun, too, so they won’t feel like a chore—instead, they could easily grow into a healthy habit.

Ultimately, though the brain isn’t a muscle, it needs just as much exercise to retain its flexibility, speed, and processing power. So, don’t take it lightly; take an hour out of your day to cater to its needs as well.