30 Jan Is Your Brain Deficient or Efficient? A Fun Baby Boomer Assessment
Online Optical Illusions can ward off Alzheimer’s and Dementia
Count every ‘F’ in the following text:
FINISHED FILES ARE THE RE
SULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTI
FIC STUDY COMBINED WITH
THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS…
How many did you count on your first go? Three, four, or more? There are actually six ‘F’s in the ‘finished files’ phrase. The “trick” attached to this Online Optical Illusion teaser is that it is difficult to locate all of ‘F’s on first glance. The reasoning behind it is varied. The text that accompanies this online optical illusion/brain game tells the participant that “the brain cannot process ‘of’”. Well, we all know that is hardly true. We read the word ‘of’ quite often. The brain is perfectly capable of processing any combination of letters, whether ‘real’ words or ‘nonsense’ words. Early literacy testing consists of having children read combinations of letters in a timed assessment, and they do not come to a screeching halt when they reach the word ‘of’. (The word ‘of’ appeared 10 times in this first paragraph. Now 11. Did your brain see them?)
What is actually happening is your brain’s instinctive ability to screen information for its importance and pass on by what it has decided your complicated world can do without. We have learned when we scan text for content that we can make sense of the words by filtering out the ‘unimportant’ words like a, an, the, of, and so on. It is an efficient little trick our brains have developed to focus our time and energy on the important stuff. If we spend our time on each and every incoming message we would never get through the day; and if we did, we wouldn’t be sane.
Sorting out information and categorizing it as relevant or irrelevant can be used for fun, like online optical illusions and brain games, but it can also be used to study the effects of aging. What has been discovered in the baby boomer population is that as people age, their ability to focus on important information while ignoring unimportant information becomes increasingly strained. Alzheimer’s and dementia patients show similar characteristics in behavior, particularly at the end of the day. What has been happening is that their brains have been running on overload all day trying desperately to manage the overwhelming amount of information they are receiving. Because their brains are already compromised with mental illness, they are simply not able to cope by the end of the day. Hence, the “sundowning” effect reported by health professionals and family members.
Although we may not necessarily be able to prevent certain forms of dementia, there are some suggestions to help redirect our attention and help us focus on the important information we come into contact with in the course of the day. As stated in a March 19, 2007 article on Forbes.com entitled “Gaming’s Health Benefits”, one way to help you tune out the sensory static is to give your brain a workout by playing online optical illusions and brain games. But baby boomers be warned, as six hours of PlayStation every day won’t help you ward off dementia. It’s the brain teasers such as the online opitical illusions and psychological games found on Boomer Yearbook that will keep your brain at its best well into your Golden Years.
Now that you know where to find these games and online optical illusions, there’s only one thing left to do:
Come join Boomer Yearbook and continue to challenge your brain with Online Optical Illusions and brain teasers? And let us know which Online Optical Illusion you’ve found to to be the most mentally rewarding? Game on!
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