How to Train Your Brain
The four pillars of brain fitness are exercise, diet, cognitive training, and stress management.
Although there are more and more people who want to sell you computer programs for brain fitness, computer training is only part of the picture.
If you look at research on how to promote mental fitness, one of the most important findings is the impact of physical fitness on mental fitness. Although no one knows for sure, study after study has shown that improving your physical fitness can help to improve your mental fitness. Even something as simple as walking for 30 minutes a day can make a difference. So when people ask me how to keep their brains fit, I always tell them to exercise.
The second pillar of brain fitness is diet. Diet can make a difference in your chances of getting Alzheimer’s disease and how quickly someone who has memory problems can get worse. How you eat can make a difference in your chances of having cognitive problems. The link may be by way of cardiovascular fitness. More and more, it’s clear that the same things that keep your heart healthy can help to keep your brain fit. That means that maintaining a good body weight, reducing your cholesterol, and following a heart-healthy diet can help you keep your brain sharp.
The third pillar of brain fitness is mental activity. Research has shown that people who are mentally activity are at lower risk of having problems with their memory and of developing Alzheimer’s disease. One of the best ways to keep mentally active is to use a computer brain training program. See below for more.
The fourth pillar or brain fitness is mood and stress management. Robert Sapolsky showed a long time ago that stress can kill brain cells. Our own study several years ago showed that depression can increase someone’s risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease, and other researchers have shown that emotional distress can affect your chances of having memory problems.
MORE ON COMPUTER BRAIN FITNESS TRAINING
Computer-based brain fitness training programs vary widely in what they train, how accessible they are, and how much they cost. As with many things, it’s not always clear that the more you pay, the more you get.
What should you train? Research shows that some elements of cognitive training are effective (that is, training actually works) and may have an effect in turn on basic functions of daily living.
You should train the following:
- Working memory
- Processing speed
- Logic and reasoning
Free programs for working memory training:
Working memory is the ability to keep several things in your mind at once and do something with them. A simple example is doing a mental arithmetic problem, where you have to keep several facts in mind to solve it.
Something called the “n-back” procedure can help you train working memory. “N-back” refers to the task’s requirement that you remember something that you were shown or that you heard before what you saw or heard most recently. If you’re shown a series of number or letters on a computer screen, you might be asked to press a button when you see a letter that you saw several letters ago.
Two free sources of n-back training are:
Working memory training is explicitly included in the Neuroactive and Posit Brain Fitness programs as well.
A number of sites offer free brain training games that will help with concentraton, attention, and problem solving skills. Several sites I like:
One of the best things about computer-based training is the computer’s ability to follow how you’re doing and adjust the difficulty of the task. Computer programs can track your progress over time and can be set up to present a variety of tasks so you won’t get bored. All of the currently-available packages will do these things for you. Several of them are very expensive, though.
My current favorite inexpensive brain training software package is Brain Challenge from Gameloft. At $9.95, it’s the best deal I’ve seen. The program is somewhat rudimentary compared to packages that cost hundreds of dollars, and the feedback is gives you is sometimes inconsistent. But it (a) tracks your progress, (b) gives you feedback, (c) has a variety of activities that tap working memory, processing speed, reasoning, and attention, and (d) adjusts the task difficulty to your performance.
Find out more about Brain Challenge at the Gameloft site by clicking here.
Disclosure: I don’t receive any compensation for listing any of these programs, and I have no financial relation with the software manufacturer. In other words, there’s no conflict of interest.
Latest
- Brain Fitness and The Mind of a Monk
- Brain Fitness Tip: Training Without a Computer
I saw an interesting blog post yesterday evening on the site of the Huffington Post about the potential benefits of meditation – or at least about what one woman thinks might be the benefits. Priscilla Warner writes about the contrast between Tibetan monks’ apparent calm, evident even on brain scans, and her own anxiety disorder. Ms. Warner says that she suffers from panic disorder, a severe form of anxiety in which a person can have multiple anxiety attacks every day, even in the middle of the night. Her post is titled “I Want the Brain of a Monk” Although most people don’t suffer from anxiety this severe, many people have symptoms of anxiety. And research has consistently shown that higher levels of anxiety are related to more memory problems.
What’s the relation to brain fitness? In my brain fitness class, I often mention the usefulness of meditation in helping reduce stress and anxiety, both of which have negative effects on memory. You don’t have to go to Tibet to get the benefits of meditation. If you simply take 10 minutes several times a day to break in to the ongoing rush of getting things done, you’ve made a start. Use those 10 minutes to sit quietly, relax your muscles, and breathe deeply.
If you do that every day for two weeks, I think you’ll notice that you feel calmer and better able to focus. And if you’re better able to focus, you will be better able to pay attention and remember things.
Although many people are excited about the potential for using computers to train their brains, we shouldn’t forget that other techniques have been used to the train the brain for many centuries. I’m thinking about the large number of techniques for meditation. While free computer software still requires an investment in a computer, meditation only asks you to sit or lie quietly and focus your mind.
A recently-published study shows parts of the brain in long-term meditators are larger than the same parts of the brain in people who don’t meditate. The article by Eileen Luders and her colleagues appeared in a recent issue of the journal Neuroimage (Vol. 45, No. 3, pp. 672-678, April 15, 2009). The study showed that portions of the orbitofrontal cortex and the hippocampus were larger in persons who had been regular meditators for 5 or more years. The study is interesting because the parts of the brain that were larger are often thought to be important in helping people keep themselves emotionally balanced.
A number of strategies are likely to be helpful for meditators. There has been a great deal of interest over the last several years in mindfulness meditation. Researchers have studied how it can be used in reducing anxiety and depression. Mindfulness is based on Buddhist meditation (for a brief article, click here) but you don’t have to be a Buddhist to practice meditation. In fact, one of the most important persons who has promoted mindfulness is Jon Kabat-Zinn, a researcher at the University of Massachusetts. You can see a video presentation by him on YouTube by clicking here.