If we told you that you could take a magical pill that made you smarter in an instant, would you do it? That pill doesn’t exist, but there is something you can do every day to boost your braininess: jigsaw puzzles.
Do jigsaw puzzles help your brain and make you smarter? Exciting studies say that they do. Let’s dive into the research and look at all the ways that your favorite pastime can actually boost brain health.
In today’s digital age, short-term memory problems impact everyone. We are always moving from one distraction to the next in our hyper-connected online lives. You’ve probably experienced some of these situations:
Luckily, putting together a jigsaw puzzle works out your short-term memory muscles. Puzzling is one of the few activities that work both the right and left sides of your brain at the same time.
The right side of your brain is the home of your creative mind, while the left side is the home of your analytical mind. When they work together, your brain cells make connections, which improves your ability to learn, retain information, and remember things.
Every puzzler knows that magical feeling of fitting a new piece into the puzzle. It doesn’t have to be the final piece that puts the whole puzzle together, either. Every time you connect a piece, your brain does a little celebration and releases dopamine.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that’s created in the brain and causes you to feel pleasure. It has a ton of other cool benefits that boost brain health too. Dopamine plays a vital role in motivation, learning, memory, attention span, and mood.
Plus, it impacts the health of your kidneys, blood vessels, heart rate, and more. Putting together a jigsaw puzzle is a great way to get healthy bursts of dopamine without a screen.
When you work on a jigsaw puzzle, you intensely study the size and shape of every piece to determine where it could go. This activity encourages your visual-spatial intelligence, which you need to recognize patterns and follow directions. Good visual-spatial intelligence makes these activities way easier:
When your visual-spatial skills are sharp, you are more alert and artistic. Jigsaw puzzles are so beneficial for visual-spatial intelligence that they are recommended for seniors who are losing their cognitive function.
Meditation is all the rage right now. The activity is praised for keeping your brain young and safeguarding your mental health.
When you imagine someone meditating, you probably see them sitting cross-legged on a big pillow with their eyes closed and their palms resting on their knees. This is a great way to meditate, but it’s not the only way.
Working on a jigsaw puzzle can actually be a form of meditation. It creates a wonderful combination of brain concentration and relaxation. Just like with meditating, you are fully immersed in the activity, but it isn’t taxing on your brain.
When your brain is in this dream-like state, your mind can wander. You forget the stressors of your daily life and start to daydream, which produces the same brain benefits as meditation.
Jigsaw puzzles get a ton of credit for helping seniors stay sharp, but they’re great for young minds too! Putting together a beginner’s level jigsaw puzzle can help young kids recognize shapes, patterns, and colors.
It’s also healthy for kids to learn how to see the small parts of a bigger picture. Developing this skill can help kids when they learn to read and need to put letters together to form words.
Jigsaw puzzles also teach patience, concentration, and problem-solving, which are all great mental workouts. Lastly, kids can learn hand-eye coordination from jigsaw puzzles, which benefits their fine motor skills.
In our totally biased opinion, we think that working on a jigsaw puzzle is one of the best things you can do to keep your brain sharp and healthy. However, there are other great practices you can incorporate into your daily life to boost brain health, including:
Just like jigsaw puzzles, these activities can make you smarter, improve your mental health and boost overall happiness.
To wrap up, here are the great ways that working on jigsaw puzzles help your brain:
We love how many amazing brain benefits come with puzzling because it’s an activity that we already do for enjoyment. These benefits are the cherry on top of the hours of fun that you can get out of a jigsaw puzzle.
Even with all of the proven brain benefits of jigsaw puzzles, it’s hard to carve out time to work on one. An easy way to make puzzling part of your daily routine is with a Completing the Puzzle rental membership!
We’ll send you a jigsaw puzzle that you complete and send back to us. Once we receive it, we’ll ship off your next one. Get started with Completing the Puzzle today.
