Board games are good for the brain.You can find out more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation, Plato said. Playing in our society is too often underestimated in its importance for the growth of the child and for the development of intelligence, intuition and creativity.
Even the little ones don’t seem to have enough time to play anymore . And then the time has come to change course. Science also confirms this. In the winter evenings and during the next holidays, we try to rediscover the pleasure of gathering around a board game, with family and friends.
Assomensana has conducted research on this by focusing on traditional board games. These games shape new mental forms – also thanks to the company of others – and produce positive effects on the brain of the participants.
Fortunately, most of the time the board games are inevitable during the holiday season, when leaving work commitments aside and what you really are becomes much more important than what you do .
The game, in all its forms, is an important mental training . Simply put, the game trains the brain . This was stated by Professor Giuseppe Alfredo Iannoccari , president of Assomensana , who cares a lot about mental gymnastics.
“Board games, including those with cards, but with more than two players , enrich the neural networks, that is the bonds between the cells, and stimulate the neurons to make contact with each other, increasing important” reserves “of the brain. A recent study, conducted at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin, highlighted how the game increases planning, memory, attention and reasoning skills “ – explained the expert.
In his opinion, the benefits of board games stem mainly from the fact that they require the brain to maintain concentration for a long time . And concentration is one of the fundamental pillars for good cognitive functioning. Each of us should be able to stay focused for 50 minutes, with a natural decrease in concentration after about 20-30 minutes.
The expert explains in board games verbal memory and visual memory are involved , which are used to keep the game patterns in place, to predict the opponents’ moves, to plan their next moves and to reason on the conduct of this activity.It is the brain, together with a pinch of intuition, that allows us to move towards adding the best result when we play. Games like Risiko, for example, stimulate this propensity.
Finally, let’s not forget that, as Assomensana points out, board games stimulate socialization among people. In this regard, numerous scientific studies confirm that people who have a rich social network keep cognitive functions , such as language, memory and reasoning active longer , and are less likely to incur neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease.
