No matter how young or old one is, barely a year or approaching a century, odds are they have seen a puzzle of sorts. A very common stimulus toy for babies is the block and hole toy, which is essentially a simple puzzle. As most children age, they are at some point subjected to a jigsaw puzzle with a few pieces. Even as one ages, a common hobby is assembling puzzles or solving crosswords. It seems all ages can enjoy a puzzle, but what makes them worth the time and effort, and perhaps more importantly, how can they improve your mind?
A Few Pros to Puzzling
"People who do jigsaw puzzles show greater spatial ability” – Sherry Willis of Pennsylvania State University, psychologist
Increased Memory
Puzzles help strengthen the bonds between your brain cells and create new ones. This improves your mental speed and helps stimulate thought. They help younger ages by forming the undeveloped mind with a strong memory and help older minds by testing them and keeping them fresh. This refresh helps combat memory problems, being most common in older ages anyway.
Increased Creativity
By bending the mind to think in different and new ways, puzzles encourage non-conventional and creative ways of thinking. The experimentation that comes with solving puzzles positively influences problem solving skills.
Dopamine Production
Your brain communicates with your nervous system by producing several different neurotransmitters. These serve as a way for your brain to instruct your body. Puzzles are a great way to help your brain produce the neurotransmitter dopamine, the brain releasing it every time you solve another part. Dopamine influences a positive mood, heightened concentration, and a stronger memory, all of which are great improvements to have.
Working Entire Brain
Because puzzles require both logic and creativity, the brain uses many different regions in conjunction in order to find a solution, as opposed to using certain isolated parts. This cooperation is trained into the brain, causing it to use this different way of thinking when looking for other solutions. Many educators find that this way of thinking is very beneficial in developing a deep understanding of subjects.
What's the Deal?
Overall, puzzles help shape and hone the mind and improve your brain in spades. It doesn't matter if you're great at puzzles or bad at them, the act of processing them and solving them is what really matters. Will Shortz, a crossword editor for The New York Times said in an interview, "there's a constructor in Boston that I know of that's one of the top constructors, and he says he's not very good at solving puzzles at all." So if puzzles aren't your strong suite, don't be afraid to give them a try, the only results can be good ones.
