Brain Building Games

By Kenneth M. Heilman, Brooke Wilson, Ashton Wilson and 2 more

It has long been known that cognitive (thinking and reasoning) stimulation of the brain’s cerebral cortex enhances the brain development of children and reduces degeneration with aging. In addition, competition enhances engagement. During long trips or while waiting, Heilman, a neurologist, along with his grandchildren, children, and son-in-law would play games. Studies of patients with brain injuries and functional brain imaging have revealed that different parts of the cerebral cortex perform different functions. We developed and selected games that we had fun playing, were competitive, did not need a computer or purchases, and stimulate different specific areas of the brain. In this book, we describe areas of the cerebral cortex and their functions. We then describe some games that may stimulate these areas, as well as provide enjoyment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984561626

Kenneth M. Heilman

Kenneth M. Heilman (senior author), received his MD degree from the University of Virginia (1963), trained in internal medicine at Cornell-Bellevue, was an Air Force captain and Chief of Medicine at NATO Hospital, Izmir, Turkey (1965–1967). He took his neurology residency/fellowship at the Harvard Neurological Unit and joined the faculty at the University of Florida in 1970. Currently, he is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Florida and a staff neurologist at the NF/SG-Veterans Affairs Medical Center. In addition to patient care and teaching (students, residents and fellows), he performs research. He is the author/editor of seventeen books, one hundred chapters, and six hundred journal publications. He has received many honors-award from several neurological and neuropsychology societies. The co-authors are Heilman’s grandchildren: Brooke Wilson (age 17), Ashton Wilson (age 15), Ethan Wilson (age 13) and his son-in-law Dr. James Bradley Wilson, a family physician.

Book preview

Copyright © 2018 by Kenneth M. Heilman.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2018912653

ISBN:                Hardcover                        978-1-9845-6164-0

                          Softcover                           978-1-9845-6163-3

                          eBook                               978-1-9845-6162-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 10/29/2018

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CONTENTS

I       Introduction

II     Left Frontal Lobe Executive Networks

A. Letter-Word Fluency

B. Letter–Proper-Name Fluency

C. Divergent Thinking

D. Working Memory

E. Component Searches

F. Planning Ahead—Tower of Coins

III    Left Frontal Motor Networks

A. Coin Rotation

B. Coin Capture

C. The Hanging Quarter

D. Four Circle Aiming

E. Coin Soccer

IV    Right Frontal Lobe Networks

A. Design Fluency

B. Action-Intention

1. Initiation

2. Inhibition

V     Left Medial Temporal Lobe

VI   Left Temporal and Parietal Lobe

A. Lexicon

1. Rhyming

2. Homophones

B. Semantics

1. What Doesn’t Belong?

2. Category Fluency

3. How Are These Two Items Alike?

4. Creativity: Finding The Thread That Unites

5. Twenty Questions

VII   Inferior Occipital-Temporal Lobes: Imagery

A. Color Imagery

B. Letter Imagery

C. Picture Recognition

VIII Ventral Striatum Risk Taking

IX     Conclusion

I

Introduction

D URING LONG CAR trips from our home in Gainesville, Florida, to visit my wife’s parents in Pineville, West Virginia, or my parents in New York City, my children often got bored. Even though we brought books they could read and games they could play, after several hours, these would be unable to hold their interest, and they would start fighting. I thought that perhaps we could all play some games together that would hold their interest. In addition, our children also often got bored in restaurants before ordering or when waiting for food, and during this time, we again often played games. While my grandchildren, who have coauthored this book with me, now often amuse themselves with small computer games, which may have some benefit, when they are with their grandfather Pop-Pop, we often play games, which they seem to enjoy.

Pop Pop is a neurologist who takes care of patients who have diseases of the brain, spinal cord, nerves, and muscles; however, Pop-Pop’s subspecialty is cognitive and behavioral neurology. Neurologists that subspecialize in cognitive and behavioral neurology take care of patients who have diseases of the brain that have caused behavioral disorders such as memory loss; problems with speaking or understanding speech (aphasia), reading (alexia), writing (agraphia), doing math (acalculia); and problems with getting lost, planning their futures, or even losing control of their emotions. There are a variety of diseases that can cause these disorders, such as stroke, tumors, trauma, infectious diseases (e.g., encephalitis), degenerative diseases (e.g., Alzheimer’s disease), and metabolic disorders.

By examining patients with localized injury of their brain, neurologists have learned that different portions of the brain are important for performing different activities. For example, one of the first people to report a relationship between the location of a brain injury and the deficit exhibited by patients was Paul Broca (1861), a French neurologist who noticed that patients who had injured the frontal lobe of their left hemisphere were unable to normally speak (Figure 1). These patients had trouble producing words, but they could understand other people’s speech.

1.jpg

Figure 1. Broca’s area. Drawing of the left side of the brain showing the major lobes (frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital). In the bottom part of the left frontal lobe is Broca’s area. When this area is damaged, people have trouble speaking but can understand other peoples’ speech.

About ten years after Broca’s report, a German neurologist, Carl Wernicke, described patients who, unlike the patients described by Paul Broca, were able to speak