Healthy and Abnormal Aging

How can cognitive exercise help us as we age?

What is Abnormal Aging?

Elderly people face not only physical decline but cognitive . As people get older, physical complications arise as do cognitive. In healthy aging populations, the declines are slight and can be improved with regular physical activity, healthy eating habits, community engagement and by doing cognitively demanding tasks.

In people with Alzheimer’s or dementia, the nervous system deteriorates as plaques become more present within the neural tissue. These populations are particularly sensitive, as their physical and cognitive functions are dramatically impacted. Patients with these disorders forget who their loved ones are, where they live, and whether they have completed an activity such as taking medication.

What Can Be Done to Help with Aging-Related Cognitive Decline?

Engaging elders with empathy, open-mindedness, and a smile can help foster positive interactions and emotions. In addition, ensuring proper nutrition and physical exercise can prevent and delay signs of cognitive aging. Cognitive remediation can assist healthy aging and dementia populations improve cognitive function in everyday life. Areas elderly and dementia patients have difficulty with include memory, attention, language, visual-spatial skills, and executive functions. Therapy for dementia and related disorders can include medications, occupational therapy, psychotherapy, environmental modifications, and living assistance.

We Suggest the Following Cognitive Exercises for Aging:

Writing in the Stars

This exercise trains logical reasoning for tasks like keeping track of appointments and engaging in groups.

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Basketball in NY

Requires the patient to engage in strategy and problem-solving to plan actions that lead to successful completion.

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Restaurant

Users are presented with food orders from customers. The goal is to correctly match each order with each customer.

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An American in Paris

While traveling through foreign cities, users will have to remember itineraries in the correct order.

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Elephant Memory

Trains strategy techniques to memorize material without learning it by heart.

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Two-Timing

This exercise trains the ability to share attention between two different types of stimuli: auditory and visual.

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Bird Song

In this exercise, users must memorize different bird sounds and match them to images of birds.

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Gulf Stream

Identify the fish that crosses the screen as fast as possible, to determine whether it matches a target fish.

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How Can HappyNeuron Pro Help?

HappyNeuron Pro can be used to provide cognitive stimulation to aging populations. For both healthy and abnormal aging, therapists providing cognitive remediation therapy can choose from an array of exercises that target key cognitive domains such as memory, executive function, auditory processing, visual-spatial skills, language, and computational skills. HappyNeuron Pro can be used on any device that has an internet connection. We suggest using a touchscreen device, as elderly people may experience some confusion when using a standard desktop computer.

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