The Hidden Link: Board Games, Brains, and the Path to Reentry

More Than Mental Health: The Physical Power of Cognition

At The Koinonia, we talk a lot about how tabletop games heal the mind—by building empathy, social skills, and emotional regulation. But a recent clinical study reveals an even deeper, more fundamental benefit: Board games are powerful physical-cognitive training tools.

Research into community-dwelling older adults found that an eight-week program using simple board games (like Ludo, Chess, and Chutes/Snakes and Ladders) significantly improved not just cognition, but also balance and mobility, leading to a decrease in the risk of falls.

The Unexpected Connection: Brains Control Balance

Why does playing Ludo or Chess improve your ability to walk without falling? Because physical and cognitive functions are inextricably linked.

• Executive Functions are the Key: The study highlights that maintaining balance and preventing falls requires strong executive functions—the same cognitive processes responsible for planning, coordinating goal-oriented behavior, and inhibiting prevailing, automatic responses.
  • Inhibition: (Stopping yourself from making an impulsive move.)
  • Updating: (Monitoring your position and adjusting your strategy.)
  • Shifting: (Switching your attention between the game board and your physical self.)
• The Game as a Workout: Board games are, in effect, a form of cognitive training (CT). By engaging the brain in strategy, calculation, and sequential thinking, games build neuroplasticity and cognitive reserve. This enhanced brain function then translates to improved control over the body, leading to better balance, gait, and overall mobility.

Translating Mobility to Reentry

While our residents aren’t focused on fall prevention, the takeaway for rehabilitation and reentry is profound:

1. Impulse Control is Physical: A person leaving prison needs to inhibit the automatic responses built over years in a high-stress environment. The skill of consciously overriding an immediate reaction (inhibition), trained by a chess game, is the same skill needed to override an impulse to argue or make a quick, poor decision on the street.
2. Complex Planning: Success in the free world requires juggling appointments, job applications, family obligations, and transportation—all complex, multi-tasking behaviors. The brain training received from strategic games builds the neural scaffolding necessary to manage these cognitive demands effectively.

The Koinonia is providing a low-cost, accessible intervention that simultaneously sharpens the mind, rebuilds vital executive functions, and prepares the whole person—mind and body—for the rigorous demands of a successful second chance.

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Link to Source: Effects of board games on balance in association with cognition in community-dwelling older adults

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