“Life goin' nowhere. Somebody help me.
Somebody help me, yeah.
Life goin' nowhere. Somebody help me, yeah.
I'm stayin' alive.”
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| 2400th Day: photo by Cliff Hutson |
Healthy Aging
Various
studies have sown that “healthy aging is associated with a decline in sensory, motor and specific cognitive functions. However, such declines depend on various factors, such as genetics and lifestyle. In particular, physical activity and training not only improve physical and motor but also cognitive functions, and reduce risk for cognitive decline and dementia in later life.”
This past Monday marked a milestone of 2400 days since I made a commitment to regular exercise. The photo is of the display of the Wii Fit application on my Nintendo, so I think the data is close enough for our purposes.
To be sure, I have not worked out on every one of those days. But, I did something on most of them; missing occasionally due to illness. One streak was broken when I was out of town last
year. I like to believe that my activity has helped improve my mood, well being, and energy level.
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| High Score?; photo by Cliff Hutson |
On the Other Hand
One of my activities is playing tennis on Wii Sports. Three years ago I reached the skill level of 2399. Some say that this is the highest score possible. I am very proud of this as it was done playing left handed, and, like Inigo Montoya, "
I am not left handed."
This morning marked my 1785th day of playing a variety of video games with my "other" hand. There are those whom argue that this is a bad thing, but I found it to be an intriguing challenge. And, there are
others citing its benefits.
I can’t prove that this exercise has improved communication between my left and right brain hemispheres which might
benefit
creative and abstract thinking, but I don’t think that it been detrimental to my wellbeing. Neither do I consider myself to be
ambidextrous and would never consider eating not writing with my left hand unless forced to do so.
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| Architecto - Model 01: photo by Cliff Hutson |
Cognitive Skills
The concept of some type of neural or cognitive pool of resources that protects against age-related cognitive decline has been an important idea in both the cognitive and neural aging
literature.
Spatial thinking is a collection of cognitive skills. The skills consist of declarative and perceptual forms of knowledge and some cognitive operations that can be used to transform, combine, or otherwise operate on this knowledge. The key to spatial thinking is a constructive amalgam of three elements: concepts of space, tools of representation, and processes of reasoning. -
“Learning to Think Spatially,” by NationalResearch Council.
Wikipedia tell us that “Older adults tend to perform worse on measures of spatial visualization ability than younger adults, and this effect seems to occur even among people who use spatial visualization frequently on the job, such as architects . . .” So, in order to maintain my visual perceptual abilities, principally the ability to understand spatial relationships, I decided to play with blocks.
I have amassed several sets. The most challenging of these is
Architecto which provides a series of increasingly difficult plans and asks the player to build the structures. Another, which is simpler in nature, but intrigued into studying more about architecture is
Blockitecture Series 1: Brutalism. Designed by James Paulius for Areaware. They seemed to have renamed it "Habit", but it is still a set of architectural building blocks than can be used to create a variety of structures.
If building projects stimulate creativity, and sharpen crucial skills in
children the activity might help me maintain mine.
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| Blockitecture Project: photo by Cliff Hutson |
