Puzzles

Are Puzzles & Brainteasers the key to happiness?

You know that feeling of satisfaction you get when you solve a puzzle? That’s dopamine being released by your brain. If we solve a small puzzle or make a big breakthrough, our brains release dopamine which improves motor skills, increases concentration power, makes us optimistic, confident, and enhances our recollection. An increase of dopamine cements the practice of solving puzzles in our brain, which is why most people will want to try new and more challenging puzzles after solving one.

an "out-of-the-box" activity!

Jigsaw puzzles are excellent brain training and co-ordination improvement tools and are huge fun for the whole family, allow for quality time, and provide a huge sense of accomplishment when they are complete!

Jigsaws develop your abilities to reason, analyze, sequence, deduce, logical thought processes and problem solving skills. These types of puzzles also improve hand-eye co-ordination and develop a good working sense of spatial arrangements.

When you solve a jigsaw puzzle, you are engaging your brain to retain information on shapes and colours in order to choose pieces that will fit together properly. Your brain needs to memorize what each piece looks like (or should look like) and what kinds of pieces you are searching for in order to complete the picture. Doing this repeatedly reinforces short-term memory.

LINK: PICKING THE RIGHT JIGSAW PUZZLE FOR YOU

In schools and other training establishments, jigsaw puzzles are extensively used as learning aids.

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How do we wire our brains for the better?

That’s where brain games, puzzles and teasers come in. We can enhance our mental fitness by exposing the brain to puzzles that challenge our normal modes of thinking.

Ever heard of the phrase “use it or lose it?” That’s quite literally true when it comes to the way our brains age. When we don’t actively seek novel experiences that expose our minds to all sorts of new and challenging stimuli, our neuroreceptors die off from disuse.

Lateral thinking is a form of problem-solving that utilizes a more creative, less direct approach to the problem. Vertical thinking involves analytical, logical problem-solving—which is an approach we’re often taught when dealing with math equations.

Brain teasers can help keep the mind stimulated by encouraging it to think and act in new and novel ways. We aren’t often given the opportunity to exercise lateral thinking in our day to day lives. Lateral thinking keeps us feeling fresh, creative, on our toes, so to speak, when tackling new problems.

Brain puzzles are games that also challenge our thinking but may require logic or vertical analysis to solve. Brain puzzles can even be physical objects!

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