Brain games and or ways to help my memory?

I was diagnosed with MCI almost 3 years ago. I do Wordle, 1000 piece jigsaw puzzles, I’m building my Family Tree on Ancestry, and I paint.
I’m 74 years old.
Now I’m being tested for Cerebellar Dementia. My brain has shrunk, but I can still do all the things mentioned above.
Learning new tasks has become almost impossible though.
The atrophy in my brain has also caused me to have Ataxia.

Hello @dtj217 and welcome to Mayo Connect. I appreciate you posting about an app that has been helpful to you. Sharing information like this is helpful to everyone in the community. It looks like your MCI was diagnosed at age 52.

Have you been involved with other therapies or medications that have helped you? Please share as you are comfortable doing so.

I have had occupational therapy and speech therapy. I use a daily planner, as my speech therapist recommended. I had a neuro-psych eval that resulted in the diagnosis. I recently had a re-eval that showed improvement in some areas and decline in others. I’m seeing a counselor to deal with the many losses I’ve experienced including loss of a job that I loved, loss of being able to drive, recent death of a parent, and more. I am so grateful for this platform to learn from and share with each other. We need each other!

I, too, am glad that you found this forum, @dtj217. It is good to share experiences with others who are on the same journey. It sounds like you have a great support team in your corner. Having occupational and speech therapy are wonderful adjuncts to treatment. Dealing with your losses with a counselor is also helpful.

What early symptoms led you to this diagnosis? If you could share any experiences that were helpful to you, what would they be?

Music is wonderful brain exercise. Pick an instrument that's not too hard, and take lessons. Music is very mathematical

All the ideas for brain games and new learning are great!
As we lose the ability to remember friends names or local businesses, etc being able to review this information more frequently helps boost recall. Research has shown that tests increase memorization better than just reading a list over and over. Being tested on facts is the best way to study.

Testing yourself on friends names, where they live, what store do you go to for hardware and where is it (or whatever info doesn’t pop into your head like it used to) would help keep those memories.

Here’s a fun new learning task. Create a personalized test to practice using AI. I simply use Gemini, Google’s free AI.

Go to gemini.google.com
In the prompt window, tell Gemini to create a test and then you can type in some facts you’d like to be tested on.

Here’s what I typed in:
Create a memory test and answer sheet using these facts: next door neighbor is Jessie, his wife is Bell, Hannah lives in the blue house, her dog is Spike, Berry lives in the white house with his two children John and Joanna.

Attached is the test that was created, and the answer sheet. It is so easy, multiple tests could be made. My method of saving the test is to do a screenshot and save the info, but Gemini gives you other options.