• Brain teasers can improve brain function and alertness.blue brain image by John Sfondilias from Fotolia.com
  
  It is important to keep your mind fit and functioning well. By employing special brain exercises otherwise known as "teasers," we can improve our mental alertness and sharpness. These kinds of exercises allow the mind to take in more sensory information while improving the quality of the way the brain processes that information.
  
  

Scrambled Text

• Read a paragraph of text where each word is scrambled individually. The first and last letter of the word should have the original spelling but scramble the other letters and see if you can read it easily. You may be surprised at the accuracy and rate at which you read the text. The human mind does not read each letter of text but reads the word as a whole.
  
  

Missing Letters

• Read a paragraph of text with a few words with the letter "F" in it. Add the word "of" in a few places within the text. When you are finished, count the number of times the letter "F" appears in the paragraph. You may be surprised that you skipped over the letter "F" in the word "of". This is because our minds don't process the "F" in this word because it is pronounces as a "V."
  
  

Hidden Pictures

• One brain teaser that is often used is to look at a picture of a particular object, such as a horse, and see what other animals might appear "hidden" in the picture. If you allow yourself to find only one object at a time instead of seeing all of the objects at the same time, you might have an easier time seeing them. This idea is known as the Gestalt effect.