Is Mahjong Good for Your Brain? Exploring Cognitive Benefits and Scientific Evidence

Mahjong requires strategic tile matching and decision-making, utilizing traditions from ancient China to simultaneously stimulate brain centers. As a multiplayer game, the process of remembering, matching, and calculating must be performed frequently enough to encourage studies to look for its use as a cognition enhancer.

What Makes Mahjong a Stimulating Activity for the Brain

Mahjong requires the continual focusing of attention on 144 tiles jumbled into complex patterns. The players must register and memorize symbols through the process of changing and discarding tiles while continually scanning for positions and formulas to use. Players must project what their opponent plans to do next in terms of discard patterning, thus developing strategic planning and flexibility in decision-making during each turn. This multifaceted approach to art and science uses different synaptic paths in the brain akin to puzzles that build up mental agility.

Mahjong, therefore, provides a well-rounded exercise for the mind, incorporating concentration, memory, and foresight as an emerging skill, developing cognitive prowess in every way.

The rules involved demand that probabilities be exercised and plans devised to win strategies, thus sharpening the skill base as well as judgment in terms of risk and reward and other analytical skills the more frequent the exercise. The interaction with other players necessitates adding the layers of social verbal exchanges and empathy issues to the total sum of overall cognitive endeavor by adding dimensions to the extent of verbal and empathic communication in the game.

Unlike the games played alone, the competitive nature of Mahjong compels a continual desire to play the game. Hence, its nature in this regard serves to encourage proficiency through the serially collated brain stimulation beyond climaxing other exercises.

In addition to the increase in cognitive function, players also experience through continual playing the feeling of flow, when they experience a level of enjoyment through full diametral immersion into the effort of play, thus leading to an increased level of concentration which, as a sport, lessens stress levels in its adjunct exercises to improve the neural health of the brain.

Furthermore, the rebuilding exercise through regular play games builds an added resilience to mental fatigue which propels an increase in the levels of out period attention spans. This holistic approach turns Mahjong into an experience, much more than playful recreation. So it is consistent with those tasks that have been recommended to maintain cognition.

Memory Improvement With Mahjong

Mahjong is a stimulus for episodic memory in that players must remember the discarded tiles and must keep track of consistent patterns on the board with tiles that appear. It has been shown in studies that frequent players obtain better short-term memory as a result of being remembered, because suit placement is important to winning melds. The repeated retrieval strengthens the connections of the hippocampus and is necessary for the development of long-term memory. For that reason, Mahjong is a useful medium for the practice of memory training.

Research results with elderly players demonstrate that working memory is affected in a positive sense after reasonable sessions of play, thus facilitating certain tasks like the building of sequences. The necessity for holding in mind the positions of several combinations of tiles is a reflection of that effective form of modern multitasking and this activates the specific brain cells needed for organization of the thoughts involved in building sequences. The benefits of learning play by increased mental complexity, from novice to expert, help in accelerated development. The brain focus required in the play of Mahjong will yield definite transferable results cognitively.

The Use of Mahjong in Dementia Prevention

Mahjong aids in the elimination of dementia by the exercise of various cognitive domains and in diminishing that which is contributory to it such as isolation and inactivity.

Those individuals who play regular games have lower incidences of mild cognitive impairment due to the fact that brain improvement and the exercise of the cerebral function has been improved due to intellectual stimulation where there has been greater flushing of gray matter in the brain as a result. Thus for those who play, they benefit because of the decrease in symptoms, which means better performances in daily tasks which require functions of memory which have been better exercised as well as planning ability, which give out better returns. This now points to Mahjong as one of low cost and benefit in the prevention of dementia.

Research involving seniors living in the community showed that digital Mahjong increased some of the neuroimaging markers which were involved with the progression of dementia.

Increasing Attention and Concentration by Playing the Game of Mahjong

In that it insists on its players watching the surface of the table closely and continually, and this essential alertness in the game is necessary if tempting possibilities of errors of omission (of calls or discards) are not to occur, interest and concentration, it has been said, will also be developed and served.

Moreover, the good eye-hand co-ordination required and exercised by the players in the folding and discarding to commence with the tiles and observation of finds and other players is also beneficial in the development of adequate perception. As well, vigilance acquired serves to check distractions or loss of concentration, the compensating exercise, which in itself aims successfully to exercise attention training of the brain’s efficient areas. Thus regular indulging in the game may serve to establish sharper attention fields applicable to everyday situations.

Research findings have established improved selective attention as a result of activity in the game of Mahjong, in which the players filter in varying degrees of abundance, the irrelevant tiles of the figure.

Bottom Line

Mahjong requires recall memory, pattern recognition, and fast calculations that encourages researchers to investigate the possibilities of this pastime in the capacity of a cognitive enhancer. The evidence indicates, however, that Mahjong is not solely a source of amusement but is deeply beneficial to the health of the brain and, especially, to the older mind attacked with the ravages of age.