{"id":15693,"date":"2016-06-09T12:45:08","date_gmt":"2016-06-09T10:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ferrovial.com\/blog\/en\/?p=15693"},"modified":"2025-12-12T00:33:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T23:33:07","slug":"how-can-brain-training-make-you-more-productive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ferrovial.com\/blog\/en\/2016\/06\/how-can-brain-training-make-you-more-productive\/","title":{"rendered":"How can brain training make you more productive?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do you find it hard to disconnect after work? Do you have trouble falling asleep? Find it difficult to concentrate on an important task? Do you often postpone complex tasks? These are all symptoms of lack of brain flexibility or resilience. The brain becomes trapped in low frequency, and finds it difficult to change to higher frequencies as the day progresses. In order to understand why and how this happens, and, more importantly, what we can do to have a healthy and productive brain, let\u2019s first look at some basic characteristics of this amazing organ.<\/p>\n

How does the brain work?<\/h2>\n

The brain is the centre of our nervous system. It is a sophisticated control panel<\/strong>, in charge of controlling all the other systems in our bodies. It processes and stores information and prepares adequate responses, most of them in an automatic<\/strong> and unconscious manner<\/strong>. This is all possible thanks to a complex and extensive network of neurones<\/strong>, which communicate through electrical signals<\/strong> sent out by the brain and measured in brain waves. The frequency of these brain waves gives us an indication of brain activity at any given time.<\/p>\n

In 1875, British doctor Richard Caton<\/a> became the first person to demonstrate on animals that electrical activity in the brain is linked to mental activity. In the 1920s, German neuropsychiatrist Hans Berger<\/a> recorded the first electroencephalogram, and later went on to discover the link between certain mental activities and variations in the electrical impulses sent by the brain. At that time, he already surmised that certain abnormal signals were due to clinical disorders. In 1958, Joseph Kamiya<\/a>, a professor at the University of Chicago<\/a>, trained a volunteer in the emission of alpha brain waves<\/strong> (8-13Hz) and thus confirmed man\u2019s ability to regulate brain wave activity.<\/p>\n

How can stress cause the brain to deteriorate?<\/h2>\n

\"Brain<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But stress, lack of sleep, inadequate nutrition or unhealthy habits can contribute to a deterioration of the brain. Loss of memory and elasticity of the brain, together with a general thinning of the cortex<\/strong>, can negatively affect our mental, emotional and physical wellbeing, mainly because this causes us to lose flexibility and the capacity to adapt. We become \u201cstiffer\u201d in every sense, something that is poorly suited to an ever more agile and changing world. The brain needs to be highly flexible in order to adapt to all the different activities we carry out throughout the day; lack of flexibility can negatively affect performance and state of mind, making us unable to adapt to changes and doing away with creativity.<\/p>\n

Thanks to professor Kamiya, we now know that we can train the brain to be more flexible<\/strong> and more<\/strong> resilient<\/strong>. In other words, we can solve these problems which relate not only to our personal wellbeing, but also affect our professional performance. And so companies at the cutting edge of people management are increasingly getting on the wellness train, relying on what neuroscience has shown us. But how is this done?<\/p>\n

How can you train your brain?<\/h2>\n

Brain training steps to follow<\/h3>\n