Did you know that solving puzzles are excellent brain development exercises?

Puzzles have been around for a while. As children, we are often entertained with brightly colored pieces of puzzles. But the puzzle fun does not stop there. Solving puzzles also benefits adults and elderly who wish to keep their minds sharp. From improving memory to preventing early diseases in elderly, puzzles can be quite beneficial for your brain health. 

Here are some interesting puzzle benefits for adults that will make you opt for puzzle solving all over again. 

Improved Memory 

One of the best sought after benefits of solving puzzles is cognitive development. When you start solving a puzzle, each piece stimulates your brain’s problem solving ability. Our brain is made up of highly efficient brain cells called neurons. Just the way we exercise our muscles for our overall physical health improvement, neurons are strengthened in the same way when presented with a complex challenge. When you regularly solve complex puzzles, your short term memory drastically improves and can even create new neural pathways. 

It reinforces the already memorised connections in your brain making your memory sharp and precise. If you experience short term memory loss, complex puzzles can be a great way to improve your cognitive ability. 

Can Delay Dementia and Alzheimer 

According to the latest emerging studies, keeping your mind active can potentially improve brain cell health and prevent neuron decline. This is one of the earlier symptoms of Alzheimer. People who are diagnosed with early dementia are often given multiple brain exercises to perform. Puzzles require reasoning that engages both hemispheres of our brain that keeps you cognitively challenged. When introduced to children from a young age, chances of developing Alzheimer's significantly reduces. 

Problem Solving Skills 

What makes puzzles so interesting is the continuous cycle of trial and error until you figure out the right next piece. While finding the right piece, you create different forms of perspectives based on what you visually see. The entire process comes across as fun, but what you are really learning is the skill to visualise perceptions and then innovate different solutions. This increases adaptive skills and when a problem presents itself in your day to day tasks, your brain automatically processes it as a certain perspective and follows a set drill of different approaches until the problem is fixed.  

Better Spatial Intelligence 

Visual spatial reasoning is the brain’s natural capacity of imaging an object’s placement, fitting shapes and objects in various places and hence making visual decisions. Puzzle games are all about exercising your visual spatial capacity. Creating a number of outcomes until you find the right puzzle piece fits improves your visual and imagination power. For example a child who is better at creating visual outcomes will be better at visually navigating maps, building objects out of toy blocks and imaging a certain concept for learning purposes. Consequently an adult with developed spatial intelligence will be good in fields like architecture, surgery, engineering and visual arts.  

Boosts IQ 

This revelation of puzzle benefits has been relatively new. An interesting research by the University of Michigan revealed that adults who spent time solving puzzles 25 minutes a day could improve their IQ by four points. Now imagine if you have a young child who is regularly presented with puzzles to their already growing mind. The opportunities to boost their IQ would be endless! 

Improves Concentration and Focus 

If you have ever played or seen a puzzle box, you must have seen something like ‘500+ pieces of puzzle’. Now the more puzzle pieces there are, the more complex a puzzle will be. Which means more concentration and laser-like focus will be required to find the right puzzle piece. Even figuring out the first puzzle piece would be one tough ride! But that is the advantage of solving big complex puzzles. They improve your focus, your concentration unlike any other brain activity. If you struggle with keeping your focus in one place, then solving puzzles is the best leisure time activity you can start with. 

Decreases Stress Levels

You must see puzzles as a challenging task, and that is true in its problem solving essence but at the same time, it can be quite relaxing. Studies shows that having a moment with yourself while creating deeper connections will unwind you from your fast noisy day to day surroundings. As you unwind from your crazy day, you will feel your body relax and a shift to a better mood. 

So when are you getting your Puzzle Box?

If you are stuck on a new unwinding or brain activity that does not require an arm and leg then get your hands on a puzzle today. Now who does not want to have fun while becoming smart! Once you get started on puzzles, you might want a helping buddy to keep all of your puzzles in one place. 

Check out this Puzzle Ready’s portable puzzle board that can fit more than 1000 puzzle pieces, while making sure all of your pieces are neatly sorted and organised.