What are cognitive functions?

Cognitive functions are mental processes that receive, process and elaborate information, enabling perception, attention, memory and understanding needed to interact with and function in the environment.

What cognitive skills affect daily tasks?

Key cognitive skills include attention, memory, language, executive functions, gnosias, praxias, visuospatial abilities and social cognition, all required for learning, planning, communication and routine activities.

Which types of cognitive functions exist?

Common types include orientation (personal, temporal, spatial), attention (sustained, selective, alternating), memory (semantic, episodic, procedural), language, executive functions, gnosias, praxias, visuospatial skills and social cognition.

What causes difficulties in cognitive functions?

Difficulties arise from cognitive disorders, brain injury, neurological disease, aging or other medical conditions, producing impairments in memory, language, executive function, praxias and gnosias.

How are cognitive functions related to brain areas?

Cognitive functions depend on millions of neural connections across cerebral lobes and activation of specific brain areas, enabling coordinated processing of sensory input, attention, memory and motor planning.

What exercises improve cognitive functions?

Rehabilitation uses targeted exercises organized by cognitive ability—such as attention, memory, language or executive function—selected to train specific deficits and improve daily functioning.

Cognitive functions or abilities: what they are, examples, and exercises

The cognition or the cognitive functions are the mental processes that allow us to receive, process and elaborate information. That is, they allow the individual to play an active role in the processes of interaction, perception and understanding of the environment, which enables them to function in the world around them.

Cognitive skills allow us to carry out any task; therefore we use them continuously to learn and remember information, integrate personal history and identity, manage information related to the moment we are in and where we are headed. In addition, they also enable maintaining and distributing attention, recognizing different sounds, processing various stimuli, performing calculations or mentally representing an object.

All the activities we perform require the use of our brain functions, which involves millions of neural connections distributed across the cerebral lobes and the activation of different areas of the brain to interact appropriately with our environment and process the information we obtain through various channels.

Cognitive functions

Types and examples of cognitive skills:

Orientation
- Personal,
- temporal,
- spatial.

Attention
- Processing speed,
- sustained,
- selective,
- alternating,
- hemineglect.

Memory
- Semantic,
- Episodic,
- Procedural.

Language
- Expression,
- comprehension,
- vocabulary,
- naming,
- fluency,
- discrimination,
- repetition,
- reading,
- writing.

Executive functions
- Working memory,
- reasoning,
- planning,
- inhibition,
- flexibility,
- decision making,
- time estimation,
- dual-task performance,
- branching.

Gnosias
- Visual,
- auditory,
- tactile,
- gustatory,
- olfactory,
- body schema.

Praxias
- Facial,
- ideomotor,
- ideational,
- visuoconstructive

Visuospatial skills
- Spatial relationship,
- spatial visualization.

Social cognition

Difficulties in cognitive functions

Cognitive disorders, as the name implies, alter the cognitive functions of the person who suffers from them. That is, there are people who experience difficulties in memory, executive functions, language, praxias, gnosias, etc.

Exercises to work on cognitive functions or abilities

Below, we offer a series of articles with different exercises to work on cognitive functions according to the type of function or cognitive process that needs to be rehabilitated. This is a compilation of exercises organized by different cognitive abilities.