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10 Brain Exercises for Seniors: Exercise #10 Eye for Detail
Does the thought of driving somewhere new make you anxious? If the idea of going to a new part of town, searching for street names, numbers, following a map and the rules of the road, while keeping track of any developing situations in traffic feels overwhelming, it may come down to how your brain processes visual information. When going somewhere for the first time and trying to see everything simultaneously, your eyes will be all over the road, to put it one way. Focusing on one thing, like reading the address numbers can lead to less attention spent on driving safely, and near misses are just as likely to keep us at home as an actual accident.
While you’re driving, your eyes will be rapidly moving from one object to the next and your brain will need to be processing all the information it receives. These quick eye movements are called saccades, and as we age the accuracy and speed of these movements decreases. In addition, our ability to record and process the information in our brains quickly and accurately also slows down. Luckily, because of the plastic nature of our brains, we can do exercises that help improve these functions. Improving the speed at which our eyes perform these saccade movements as well as improving how accurately and efficiently our brains take in and record what we see, is possible with training. By improving this function you no longer need to be fearful of going to an appointment at a new location, or meeting friends at a restaurant in a new part of town.
BrainHQ worked with leading researchers to design the Eye for Detail exercise in order to improve your ability to make saccades more quickly and at a wider range, while simultaneously improving your brain’s ability to process more information received this way. The exercise will flash images scattered around a screen and you will need to identify the matching images, not the ones that are merely similar. As you progress, more images will be added and their distance and similarity will increase. By challenging your brain in this manner, you are improving its ability to not only take in this information by facilitating the rapid eye movement but increasing your brain’s ability to sift through the images for the correct information. Your brain’s plasticity will have you seeing more things accurately and quickly to improve your safety and confidence behind the steering wheel.
Free Brain Training Exercises
If you are interested in trying this exercise and other BrainHQ exercises for free, visit https://dynamicbrain.brainhq.com and create a free account to exercise a few minutes a day – it’s not enough, but definitely better than no exercise at all.
Don’t forget to bookmark the link!
Related Pages:
How Vision Works
Description of Eye for Detail Exercise
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DynamicBrain Inc. is the Canadian Partner of Posit Science Corporation providing brain fitness program, BrainHQ in English and French.
