Exercises of executive functions: Examples
Executive functions constitute a set of higher cognitive skills essential for daily life: from planning a task or solving a problem to maintaining attention, inhibiting automatic responses or adapting to new situations. In the clinical context, their alteration is frequent in patients with acquired brain damage, mild cognitive impairment, dementia or neurodevelopmental disorders.
Therefore, the implementation of executive function exercises within structured cognitive stimulation programs is key to preserve or recover the patient ‘s functionality. These exercises are aimed at working on processes such as cognitive flexibility, working memory, inhibitory control or planning, and can be applied both in neurological rehabilitation and in preventive interventions in the geriatric population.
In this article we review the main types of exercises, their clinical application, and how digital platforms such as Rehametrics allow you to customize, monitor and adapt these programs based on individual therapeutic goals.
What activities are used for executive functions?
It is often difficult to find apps that include executive function activities. Although we can find apps to improve , for example, attention, finding an app that has executive function activities is more difficult. The vast majority of activities and games available on the market encounter one of two problems:
- They are too easy: exercises that only work more basic aspects of cognition, but not inhibition, planning, decision making….
- They are activities with infantilized material: Exercises that are appropriate in level but that use childish materials and stimuli.
Therefore, finding suitable cognitive activities to work on executive functions is not easy.
Activity protocol for executive functions
Rehametrics has a variety of pre-designed protocols for different patients. These protocols are sessions designed by clinical experts that are adjusted to the specific needs and affected functions depending on patient and pathology.
We have developed different sessions with exercises to improve or rehabilitate executive functions. These sessions include activities of various types. Likewise, the health professional will be able to choose from more than 50 individual activities for the treatment of executive functions and options for customizing each activity to suit the individual needs of the patient.
Sample session for executive functions
Working memory
In these working memory activities, the patient will hear or see a series of stimuli that must then be repeated in an indicated order (direct or inverse).
Public transportation
Planning and decision making are important in executive function activities. In this public transportation exercise, the patient will have to plan a route in the subway, decide which lines to take, when to get off, etc. We work on executive functions with an activity of high ecological value.
Inhibition
Inhibition is an executive function that is usually closely linked to attention intervention. In this activity, the patient will have to touch all the balloons of an indicated color, except those with a bomb. In this way, we improve response inhibition.
Processing speed
The objective of this activity to work on processing speed is to touch all the indicated boxes falling from the sky before they hit the ground.
Cognitive Flexibility
In our application we find several activities to work on cognitive flexibility. Cognitive flexibility is an executive function that is treated, for example, with activities with changes of instructions.
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