There are few hobbies that require a clear mind and active body like doing a jigsaw puzzle. It's a great way to relax on a lazy Sunday and even help children develop their fine motor skills. Jigsaw puzzles stimulate both the logical left brain and creative right brain. They're also a great way to strengthen memory and combat cognitive decline.
Visual-spatial and Fine Motor Skills
Jigsaw puzzles require the ability to look at a large image and break it down into individual pieces. This helps improve visual awareness and reasoning skills. It also increases fine motor skills such as pinching and gripping.
Adults also develop perseverance when completing jigsaw puzzles. When you come across a difficult section of the puzzle, you may need to try multiple strategies before finding the right fit. This persistence can help you to become a more successful and determined person.
Working on a jigsaw puzzle can help stimulate both the left and right brains at once. The left side of the brain is responsible for logical thinking, while the right side is more creative and intuitive. This interaction between the two hemispheres can help improve cognitive functioning and prevent neurocognitive disorders, such as dementia and Alzheimer's disease. It's no wonder so many adults enjoy putting together a jigsaw! Browse our selection of Usborne jigsaw puzzles for all ages.
Problem-solving Skills
Puzzles force us to use problem-solving skills to assemble the pieces and make sense of the whole image. We have to sort through the pieces, consider their shape and color, as well as how they fit into a larger picture. This helps to boost our working memory, meaning that we can process information faster and more easily, which makes it easier to remember things such as where we parked the car!
As jigsaw puzzles become more advanced, we must work out how to organize the pieces. Perhaps we start by putting the edge pieces together first, then work out the middle by color or by referencing the image on the box. This is how we learn and develop our brain's ability to solve complex problems.
Research suggests that keeping your mind active through games like jigsaw puzzles can delay cognitive decline by as much as two and a half years. Keeping your mind engaged with challenging activities throughout your life is crucial to maintaining and improving cognition as you age.
Concentration and Focus
When working on a jigsaw puzzle, it forces us to focus on the task at hand and ignore distractions. This is a good practice for improving our ability to concentrate and focus in other areas of life.
In addition to boosting your short-term memory, solving jigsaw puzzles also helps improve your planning skills. You must consider what pieces to pick up first, which areas of the image are most important and how best to fit them together. This can be useful for adults in the workplace who need to make quick decisions and solve problems.
Spending time with a jigsaw puzzle can help you relax as it is a fun activity that stimulates the brain and helps to reduce stress levels. It can also be a great way to bond with family members while helping each other out and encouraging communication. Ultimately, completing a jigsaw can be a rewarding experience and feel like a personal achievement.
Memory
Jigsaw puzzles are a great way for adults to keep their brains sharp and improve memory skills. They require you to remember where each piece fits and then recall that information to complete the puzzle. This helps develop your ability to analyze visuals, which can be useful in business or other professional settings.
In addition, working on a jigsaw puzzle requires you to be very concentrated and ignore distractions. This can help you build your mental stamina so that you can concentrate for longer periods of time when needed in your daily life.
Keeping your mind active through activities like jigsaw puzzles and other brain games is a good way to prevent neurocognitive disorders such as dementia. In fact, a study showed that people with normal cognition who regularly engage in cognitively challenging tasks are less likely to experience cognitive decline. This is because these kinds of activities encourage neuroplasticity, which is a key component of preventing neurocognitive disorders.
