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What is Brain Training or Brain Fitness and is it Helpful?

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I am a learning specialist and educational therapist.  However,  I tell many of my clientele that I’m a personal trainer for the brain.  I help individuals of all ages to improve overall cognition, develop compensatory learning strategies and master optimal study skills.  I have seen, first hand the power of brain training.

What is Brain Training?
Brain Training, Brain Fitness, or Cognitive Remediation is the act of strengthening deficits in learning or weak areas of cognition.  This is typically done using activities that concentrate on specific areas of difficulty.  Just like a personal trainer or physical therapist can focus exercises on a particular part of the body, many learning specialists, educational therapists and learning coaches can help individuals of all ages to improve memory, visual processing, auditory processing, attention, executive functioning, stamina and more.

The Brain is Not Limited and Defined:
The brain is not inflexible and fixed.  Instead, it continues to grow, if exercised, throughout our lifetime.  Repeated brain training creates new neuro-pathways, clears the hurdles that trip the thought processes and helps the mind run smoothly and efficiently. In addition, early intervention can sometimes cure or remediate learning disabilities, assist the head injured in regaining skills and can even prevent diseases of the elderly such as Alzheimer’s and dementia.  The bottom line is that it is never too late.

How Should Brain Training Activities be Administered?
When instruction focuses on the area of difficulty, it’s important for the activities to be engaging and fun.  They need to start at a simplistic level that offers some challenge for the individual, and difficulty is increased as the participants experience success, thus keeping them in their zone of proximal development.  

Where Can I Get Brain Training Materials?
I have been creating cognitive remedial tools for the past nine years.  To learn more about my products go to Good Sensory Learning.  Otherwise, one of my favorite home-fun options is Lumosity.

Dr. Erica Warren is the author, illustrator and publisher of multisensory educational materials at Good Sensory Learning and Dyslexia Materials.  She is also the director of Learning to Learn and Go Dyslexia, in Ossining, NY.  To learn more about her products and services, you can go to https://godyslexia.com/, www.goodsensorylearning.com, www.dyslexiamaterials.com & www.learningtolearn.biz  
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