We pick up hobbies for joy and a sense of fulfillment. While all hobbies bring happiness, some in addition also positively effect your perception, memory, attention skill and your overall mental well being. These hobbies could be anything from juggling to playing video games. Listening to Music This has to be one of the most popular hobbies around the world but an average person do not realize that listening to music actually makes you smarter. Music is a very powerful tool for shaping neuronal structure and function, especially with regards auditory processing. It also improves your cardiovascular and muscle functions as well as increases the secretion of dopamine in the brain which translates into a felling of happiness when we listen to a song. Reading This one is very obvious. However, we cannot stress enough that everyone should incorporate some form of reading in their daily routine. Instead of sitting in front of the TV to watch the news, you can pick up a newspaper or a magazine or even visit a news website because reading has higher correlations with world and cultural knowledge than television viewing. Another well known fact that print exposure is associated with vocabulary, general knowledge and verbal skills. If you can pick up the habit of reading anything during the day, it’s a step forward. Juggling Learning to juggle helps our brains with visual motion perception as well as hand eye coordination. Research papers have explicitly stated that “Several brain-imaging studies have reported changes in regional brain morphology in visual association cortices in individuals learning how to juggle a three-ball cascade”. Another study shows that a person will experience changes in his grey matters as early as after seven days of training. Playing video games Playing video games has long been looked down upon as something only a couch potato would do. But actually, they provide a lot of value to our brains in many subtle ways. There are a wide range of behavioral benefits attributed to playing video games like visual attention, improving low-level vision, speed of processing and statistical inference. In an online gaming environment, it is natural for a gamer to have improved visual acuity, decision making, object tracking or even task switching skills. So much so that video games are now widely used as training tools for adults. Physical Activities Exercise is often overlooked as an activity that can make you smarter when in fact it is one of the most important. It is known for some time now that physical activities effectively change your brain – both at a morphological and functional level. An early morning jog or yoga routine can prime your brain for the day ahead. A healthy brain relies on a healthy body, so doing a physical activity as your hobby can make you both smarter and happier.
