Mental workout for improving negative and cognitive symptoms

DX'd - Other
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Hi,

Just like physical workouts its crucial we need to workout our minds too. This is especially important for people who have mental diseases. The thing is normal people do this automatically due to their active lifestyle and they use their mind resources like executive function, planning, attention, working memory, long term memory continuously to remain active. We too can improve by manually working out our mind just like physical workouts. For this we can do several things like solving puzzles, learning new things, play brain games like lumosity, neuronation games etc. Not all games give same results. I like to introduce few games in neuronation and lumosity which I think really help to improve cognitive functions which in turn help to reduce negative symptoms too.

Trail Tracker game in Neuronation

Most useful one I think and also easiest to start and play for long duration. Youtube game play video adding for giving an idea how to play it.

It helps in planning, visual memory, working memory, multitasking, focus, attention, processing speed etc.

Colour Craze game in Neuronation

It helps in attention, cognitive flexibility, working memory, processing speed etc.

Brain shift overdrive game in Lumosity

It helps in attention, cognitive flexibility, multitasking etc.

Play each game for some time daily like 30 minutes, 1 hr etc just like we do physical exercise. Changes can be noticed after some days. These are just few games I think which will help to improve cognition. Many other games might also be there but most important thing is we need to love the game so we can play it for long hours just like we play favorite games. Playing for long duration continuously is must like 10 sessions at a stretch as each session only take few minutes like 2 minute or less.

Regards

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Planning based games improve thinking skills, reduce impulsivity, improve working memory etc which in turn helps to reduce anxiety, negative symptoms, impulsive behaviors etc.

Pirate Passage game in Lumosity

The idea in this game is to find a route from the ship to reach the target without colliding with pirate ships.

Solving chess tactics puzzles is another good way to improve planning skills. Here is video of a player solving chess puzzles with instructions.

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To study the effect of three common antidepressant medications on depression-related cognitive impairment, the researchers asked over 1,000 people with depression who were taking either escitalopram (Lexapro), sertraline (Zoloft), or venlafaxine-XR (Effexor-XR) to go through extensive cognitive testing. In short, none of the medications helped. Of these patients, 95% showed no improvement on any of the cognitive impairments mentioned above, and none of the three drugs was better than the others at improving cognitive symptoms.

This result is not completely surprising — antidepressant medications are mainly meant to help improve mood and increase the ability to participate in beneficial and enjoyable activities, two key aspects of depression treatment. It’s also worth noting that different parts and processes of the brain are responsible for cognitive (versus emotional) functioning; this may explain why the three drugs tested didn’t seem to help improve cognitive symptoms. New drugs for depression may be able to address these symptoms as well.

Beyond medications, problem-solving treatment can train people how to improve their problem-solving skills, and cognitive behavioral therapy can teach people to recognize and challenge distorted thinking patterns. Another approach, cognitive remediation therapy, uses practice drills to improve memory and executive functioning. Combining these behavioral interventions with antidepressants may yield better results for improving depression-related cognitive impairments.

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I’ve tried the free versions of several brain training sites and not been that impressed . The only one I’ve paid for is Cognifit . What puts me off that is the inconsistency of the scoring from one round of doing the games to another.

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Learn to code is also useful

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coding is a better choice. you can apply that to other things.

like these games probably do help the brain but all it teaches is for you to get really good at the games.

its like playing sudoku. you can become extremely good at sudoku by practicing a ton, but you only end up becoming really good at sudoku.

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Yes coding is another great problem solving workout. Solving chess tactics improves chess play. Planning and problem solving based exercises also help to plan our daily activities, prioritize what to do first then next etc. What to do when faced with challenges, stressful situations etc thus help us to better manage depression, anxiety and other issues.

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Researchers have found that boosting activity in the brain’s areas related to thinking and problem-solving may also buffer against worsening anxiety.

Using non-invasive brain imaging, the researchers found that people at risk of anxiety were less likely to develop the disorder if they had higher activity in a brain region responsible for complex mental operations.

“These findings help reinforce a strategy whereby individuals may be able to improve their emotional functioning – their mood, anxiety, experience of depression – not only by directly addressing those phenomena, but also by indirectly improving their general cognitive functioning,” said Ahmad Hariri, professor at the Duke University in North Carolina, US.

Participants also viewed angry or scared faces to activate a region of the brain called the amygdala and played a reward-based guessing game to stimulate activity in the brain’s ventral striatum.

For the study, published in the journal Cerebral Cortex, researchers investigated undergraduate students whether higher activity in a brain region called dorsolateral prefrontal cortex could help shield these at-risk individuals from future mental illness.

Each participant completed a series of mental health questionnaires and underwent a type of non-invasive brain scan called functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) while engaged in tasks meant to activate specific regions of the brain.

The researchers asked each participant to answer simple memory-based maths problems to stimulate the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Participants also viewed angry or scared faces to activate a region of the brain called the amygdala and played a reward-based guessing game to stimulate activity in the brain’s ventral striatum.

By comparing participants’ mental health assessments at the time of the brain scans, and in a follow-up on an average seven months later, the researcher found that these at-risk individuals were less likely to develop anxiety if they also had high activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

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Do these games cost money?

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You can get free version of this apps too but in those no of games is limited.

If like chess then there are lot of sites and apps which gives free tactics puzzles. Here is one among it.

https://tactics.chessbase.com/en/Solve

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Thanks @pr21 1515

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The game, " Trail Tracker game in Neuronation . Do I play it on my cell phone (which is Apple)? Can I play it on my desktop? And how much does it cost?

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Apps come in both android and apple versions. There are some softwares which help to emulate phone apps on desktop. One I use is leapdroid.

Neuronation and lumosity apps come in free and paid versions. In free version certain no of games can be played.

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Thanks. I may follow up in a while. Depends how things are going for me.

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Some of the games are fun , but most are testing processing speed as much as intellectual ability. There’s also major doubts as to how transferable the gain in one area is to another area .

In terms of my , already known to me , cognitive weak spots I’ve not noticed any significant improvements. Bottom line- the hype is greater than the substance with such sites . If you like the tests then there’s no harm in doing them , but you should be realistic about what can be achieved with them .

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Planning based games does not depend on processing speed, no time restriction, can take as much time but need to make correct move. Pirate passage game in lumosity is one among them. It have definite cognitive improvement.

Here is a game play of it in various levels. Try to pause the video and find correct path before the player makes correct moves. You can notice the improvement from this alone without playing with app.

Medium level

Hardest

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Lumosity wouldn’t work on Firefox . Chrome loaded 2 free games very slowly . I gave up on the third one.

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Watch above youtube videos. When puzzle screen appear pause for a moment and try to find the correct path in mind. After found out continue playing the youtube video to see if its the correct answer.

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