Learning new random tidbits of knowledge is fun, but does it really add to your intelligence? It may seem like you’re just wasting time learning useless facts, but actually when you read a short piece of trivia or take a quick trivia quiz, you’re also helping your brain stay sharp and quick and even making yourself smarter in the process in ways you probably haven’t realized.
Improvements in Memory
Learning new trivia and trying to recall trivia you’ve learned before helps both your short-term and long-term memory. It can create new connections between different pieces of information and between parts of your brain, which may help you recall things more quickly and keep that retention for longer periods of time. When facts and other pieces of knowledge become connected to prior pieces of knowledge through additional information you add to your stores, your memory grows stronger and more adept at carrying facts from short-term memory over into your long-term memory centers.
To add to these connections even more and improve your recall, choose your trivia in such a way that it connects new information to old knowledge more readily. Read facts about the holiday songs you already know, the baseball team you love, or your favorite novel. You may even consider exploring more diverse topics such as things to know before taking violin lessons for beginners. Your new knowledge about the creation of Jingle Bells, the amazing feats of the Yankees outfielders, the art of learning new instruments, and the fascinating life of Victor Hugo will be much more easily recalled than random trivia because it can connect itself to the knowledge you already have about Christmas music, baseball, and literature.
Increased Mental Agility
Learning trivia and taking quick knowledge quizzes that force you to try to recall information increases your frontal lobe activity. This helps create neurons, which need activity and challenge to generate. Neurons are what process and transmit information through your brain, and the more you have working at top performance, the stronger and more adept your brain will be. This will allow you to think quicker, come up with responses on the fly, and improve the processing time when you acquire new knowledge.
Reduction of Stress
The fun and relaxed nature of learning new trivia helps reduce stress, which improves your intelligence in many ways. Stress negatively affects your brain and makes you less able to think clearly, so a quick bout of trivia facts not only teaches you those pieces of information, it calms you down and opens your mind, allowing you to access the rest of your intelligence, effectively making you smarter than you’d otherwise be at the moment. Stress reduction can have other health benefits as well. Playing games to acquire knowledge is a great way to improve yourself due to these twofold benefits of stress reduction and knowledge acquisition.
Keeping Your Brain Young
Stretching your brain and keeping it agile helps your brain avoid disease and memory loss. This allows you to think clearly, and makes you consistently better at learning new facts. This in turn creates a snowball effect. The clearer you think, the easier it is to acquire knowledge, and the more you are able to acquire, in turn allowing you to think clearly. The more you do to keep your brain thinking and learning, the better off you’ll be ten, twenty, or fifty years down the road.
Your brain is a machine, and it needs to be used and tuned in order to keep working properly. If you let it sit and don’t challenge it, it’ll lose its abilities and you’ll find yourself having trouble remembering information you once knew, recalling knowledge you’ve recently gained, and adapting to new situations. Reading an article a day, especially those about subjects you already have some knowledge about, will increase your brain’s activity and help you for years to come. Trivia offers a multitude of benefits for your brain, so get out there and learn some new facts today!
– Mary Thomas is a music lover and writes for music review blogs. If you love music too, go here for a wide selection of holiday songs.
