Exercise Your Brain for Improved Mental Fitness
February 10, 2009 by Jean Murray
I don’t know about you, but I seem to get more forgetful as I get older. My sister (a year younger than I) said she feels the same way. As I talk to other Baby Boomers nearing 60, it seems many of us are concerned as much about staying fit mentally as we are with physical fitness.
Did you know you could train your brain to increase your memory and be more productive? In his book: Train Your Brain: 60 Days to a Better Brain , Ryuta Kawashima provides exercises to help your brain be more healthy. Just like exercise is good for our bodies, Dr. Kawashima, professor of neuroscience at Tohoku University in Japan, has done experiments to show that exercise is good for the brain. The exercises that work best are simple calculations that you can do quickly.
In his experiments, Dr. Kawashima looked at brain function of adults while they were doing certain things. For example, while watching TV, the only active parts of the brain are the visual-oriented occipital lobe and the audio-oriented temporal lobe. While doing simple calculations quickly, multiple parts of oboth hemispheres actively working, and the prefrontal cotex, the area for thinking and learning, is very active.
Even more interesting were Dr. Kawashima’s experiments with Alzheimer’s patients, which showed that performing the simple calculation exercises prevented deterioration and improved prefrontal cortex function. He did use a control group, but I don’t know any more about the specific experiments.
It makes sense to me that exercising the right areas of the brain can increase memory and cognitive (thinking) function. I have his book and I’ve started doing the exercises. I’ll let you know about results later.
An online source of brain exercises is Lumosity.com . You can log in and do fun brain exercises. The concept is called “neuroplasticity” – basically it sounds like “Use it or Lose it.” If you keep your brain active with exercise, you will improve memory, attention, processing speed, and cognitive control.
How about you? Are you ready to start exercising your brain?