Who can benefit from cognitive stimulation exercises?

Children, adults and older adults, including people with Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s or intellectual disabilities, can benefit when exercises are adapted to individual needs.

What cognitive domains do these exercises target?

They target orientation; selective, sustained and alternating attention; procedural, episodic, semantic and working memory; language; executive functions; praxis; visuospatial skills; social cognition; and processing speed.

What are examples of cognitive stimulation exercises?

Examples include Get Dressed (procedural memory), Jump the Squares (alternating attention), Order Activity Steps (executive functions), Select Items from a Category, Animal Pairs (episodic memory), and Accurate Payments (working memory).

How can exercises be personalized for different users?

Personalization uses difficulty levels, stimulus quantity, time limits, printable or digital formats, group numbering and domain-specific targets to match age, diagnosis and therapeutic goals.

What are the benefits of regular cognitive stimulation?

Regular cognitive stimulation aims to slow cognitive decline, maintain preserved abilities, improve daily living skills (planning, shopping), and enhance attention and memory for prevention or compensation.

Cognitive Stimulation Exercises: Practical Examples

Q: What are cognitive stimulation exercises?

Structured activities designed to improve cognitive functioning—orientation, attention, memory, language and executive functions—through practical tasks adapted to different ages and clinical conditions.

We propose 10 cognitive stimulation exercises to work with children, adults and older adults

Cognitive stimulation

Cognitive stimulation is a set of techniques to improve the functioning of cognitive abilities. Such as: orientation, attention, memory, language and executive functions. Likewise, other cognitive areas are worked on, such as: gnosias, praxias, visuospatial skills, social cognition, etc. Below, we present 10 cognitive stimulation exercises to work with children, adults, and also, with older adults.

10 cognitive stimulation exercises

The practical exercises in cognitive stimulation that we propose below can be found on NeuronUP.

Cognitive stimulation exercises to work with children, adults and older adults

1. Get dressed

What does it involve?

First, this cognitive stimulation exercise is used to work with older adults. It can also be carried out with people with Alzheimer’s disease.

It involves dressing the silhouette appropriately, taking into account the placement and order of each garment, as well as the type of situation.

Activity: Get dressed (man) — NeuronUP activity: Get dressed (man).

What does this activity work on?

It stimulates procedural memory, body schema, ideational praxis, semantic memory and planning.

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2. Jump the Squares

What does it involve?

This exercise is ideal for people with multiple sclerosis. The user has to follow a path with the goal of reaching the final square, jumping over elements or stepping back. The user must follow the rules indicated to them.

NeuronUP cognitive stimulation exercise "Jump the Squares" — NeuronUP worksheet: *Jump the Squares*.

What does this activity work on?

This trains alternating attention and inhibition.

3. Order activity steps

What does it involve?

Indeed, this activity is very useful for people with Parkinson’s. The person must number in order all the steps necessary for Setting the Table.

NeuronUP activity "Order activity steps" — NeuronUP exercise *Order activity steps*.

What does this activity work on?

Likewise, it serves to work on executive functions.

4. Select items from a category

What does it involve?

It involves selecting a specific set of items from a group of stimuli.

NeuronUP activity "Select items from a category". — NeuronUP worksheet: *Select items from a category*.

What does this activity work on?

It is often used with people with intellectual disabilities to work on selective attention and semantic memory.

5. Let the match begin!

What does it involve?

In this game, children will have to be able to reorganize the balls. On one side, they must place the soccer balls, and the basketballs on the other. All while they keep moving.

Attention exercises for children: Let the match begin — Children’s game from NeuronUP *Let the match begin!*

What does this activity work on?

It is an ideal activity to work on planning, selective attention, sustained attention, hemispatial neglect and processing speed.

8. Animal Pairs

What does it involve?

It consists of discovering the pairs among a set of cards laid face down.

cognitive stimulation activities for children, animal pairs — NeuronUP game: *Animal Pairs*.

What does this activity work on?

First, it serves to work on the episodic memory, selective attention and working memory. On the other hand, it is suitable for group cognitive stimulation.

Personalization of the activity

This game has an extra customization that allows the professional to number the cards on their back to make the group activity easier.

9. Match characteristic – item

Indeed, NeuronUP has thousands of printable cognitive stimulation exercises. This is just one example. It also has advanced cognitive stimulation exercises, so they can also be used with people for prevention or compensation.

What does it involve?

This activity consists of pointing out the characteristics of different items.

cognitive stimulation exercises. NeuronUP activity match characteristic - item — NeuronUP worksheet: *Match characteristic – item*.

What does this activity work on?

It targets semantic memory.

10. Accurate Payments

What does it involve?

Finally, we have this activity which also offers benefits for daily life. In this exercise, the user has to select the requested amount of money exactly.

NeuronUP exercise "Accurate Payments" — NeuronUP game: *Accurate Payments*.

What does this activity work on?

Likewise, it works on working memory, shopping skills and planning.

Conclusion

In conclusion, cognitive stimulation encompasses all those actions aimed at maintaining or improving cognitive functioning through concrete exercises like the ones we have just seen. As a result, cognitive stimulation exercises aim to slow down cognitive decline and maintain preserved abilities.