5 Habits That Will Help Your Brain Stay in Peak Condition

Keep Your Brain Intact 

 

Train your brain, change your brain.

Thomas Oppong

Thanks to Natasha Connell for sharing their work on Unsplash.

Nothing about our brains is set in stone. Our brains are surprisingly dynamic. It can adapt, heal, renew or rewire itself.

What you do or don’t do daily is literally changing your brain for better or worse. But it’s not too late rejuvenate, remodel, and reshape your brain to stay in peak condition.

Experiments in neuroplasticity (the brain’s ability to change in response to experience) have proven that the brain is capable of modifying itself, either by changing its structure, increasing and reducing its size or altering its biochemistry.

Can you physically change your brain at any age? The answer is: yes, within limits. You can start with these science-backed activities and habits.

1. Juggling Improves the Brain’s Grey Matter

Yes, the simple act of juggling has recently been linked with better brain function. A new study reveals that learning to juggle may cause certain areas of your brain to grow.

The study found that volunteers who participated in a juggling exercise improved white matter in two areas of their brains involved in visual and motor activity.

‘We have demonstrated that there are changes in the white matter of the brain — the bundles of nerve fibres that connect different parts of the brain — as a result of learning an entirely new skill,’ explains Dr Heidi Johansen-Berg of the Department of Clinical Neurology, University of Oxford, who led the work.

‘In fact, we find the structure of the brain is ripe for change. We’ve shown that it is possible for the brain to condition its own wiring system to operate more efficiently, ’ she added.

Four weeks after the study, the researchers found that new white matter in the jugglers’ brains had stayed put and the amount of grey matter had even increased.

The researchers chose juggling as a complex new skill for people to learn. Juggling is one of the many activities you can choose to help your brain improve its grey matter.

2. Never Go to Bed Without Learning One New Thing.

It’s a Spanish saying. It’s profound and so true.

Juggling is not the only activity you can use to build white matter.

You can learn a variety of new things that are unrelated to what you normally do. Variety is key. Meet new people, learn a new skill, learn to dance, take up drawing, design, etc. Do something every day that stretches you and makes you somewhat uncomfortable.

Norman Doidge, explains in his book, “The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science”, “Not all activities are equal in this regard. Those that involve genuine concentration — studying a musical instrument, playing board games, reading, and dancing — are associated with a lower risk for dementia. Dancing, which requires learning new moves, is both physically and mentally challenging and requires much concentration.”

Learning a new language makes the brain grow by increasing grey matter in the areas related to the use of language, according to research. The study revealed that “The right hippocampus and the left superior temporal gyrus were structurally more malleable in interpreters acquiring higher proficiency in the foreign language.”

Leaning at least one new thing not only improves your brain, but it also helps you focus by ignoring irrelevant information.

Don’t do what you’ve always done.

3. Sleeping Poorly Is Linked to Rapid Reductions in Brain Volume

Many people don’t take good sleep seriously. The bad news is that if you sleep poorly, your brain shrinks.

That was the surprising conclusion reached by Claire E. Sexton, DPhil, Andreas B. Storsve, MSc, Kristine B. Walhovd, PhD, Heidi Johansen-Berg, DPhil, and Anders M. Fjell, PhD in their study to examine the relationship between sleep quality and cortical and hippocampal volume.

The findings showed that having trouble sleeping, or not getting enough sleep is linked to rapid reductions in brain volume. The decline can affect important areas of the brain where language, touch, balance and the ability to calculate mathematically or make decisions reside.

“Studies have shown poor sleep can cause protein buildup in the brain that attacks brain cells. So we’re still trying to put the puzzle together,” says Dr Neal Maru, a neurologist and sleep specialist with Integrated Sleep Services in Alexandria, Virginia, who is not associated with the study.

Sleep repair and restore the brain. Improving your sleep habits could be an important way to improve brain health. 7–8 hours/night of good sleep is essential for stimulating new connections and brain growth.

4. Any Form of Exercise Rewires the Brain: Keep Your Body Active

You already know that physical activity is important for your better health. Exercise also helps your cerebral quality that affects memory, motor skills, and the ability to learn.

In fact, just pedalling on a stationary bike for 30 minutes can do wonders for your brain. In a study to determine whether hippocampal volume would increase with exercise in humans, the researchers discovered an increase in hippocampal size.

“Following exercise training, relative hippocampal volume increased significantly in patients (12%) and healthy subjects (16%), with no change in the nonexercise group of patients (-1%),” they revealed.

Exercise the brain in many areas. It increases your heart rate, which pumps more oxygen to the brain. It also helps release body hormones, which provide a nourishing environment for the growth of brain cells.

Indirectly, it also improves mood, sleep and reduces stress and anxiety.

In another study, Dr Scott McGinnis, a neurologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and an instructor in neurology at Harvard Medical School said, “Even more exciting is the finding that engaging in a program of regular exercise of moderate intensity over six months or a year is associated with an increase in the volume of selected brain regions.”

Any form of aerobic exercise that gets your heart pumping is a great start. Apart from hitting the gym, you can also consider adding walking to your daily routine. Other moderate-intensity exercises, such as swimming, stair climbing, tennis, or dancing can also help.

5. Mindfulness Is Becoming a Global Phenomenon for a Good Reason

People have sworn by meditation for millennia. It’s now supported by rigorous scientific research, driven in part by a desire for new practices to improve our mental health.

The simple idea of being present throughout your day, being more conscious of life as it happens, and noticing any tension or preoccupations of the mind, without judging or analysing can improve your mental health. It’s highly effective in combating stress.

Studies report that meditation can “permanently rewire” your brain to raise levels of happiness. “In the past decade, research has shown that the benefits of mindfulness include: stress reduction, improved concentration, boosts to working memory, reduced rumination, less emotional reactivity, more cognitive flexibility, a higher level of relationship satisfaction, etc.” writes Christopher Bergland of Psychology Today.

Our brains are on auto-pilot most of the time. Begin to notice the world around you. Awaken your senses to the world around you.

You can upgrade our brain in many different ways. Adopting better habits will not only increase your brain’s grey matter, but it will also slow cognitive decline, speed up your memory recall and improve your mental health.

Thomas Oppong is the founder of AllTopStartups and writes on science-based answers to problems in life about creativity, productivity, and self-improvement.

An Effortless Way to Improve Your Memory

Memory

A surprisingly potent technique can boost your short and long-term recall – and it appears to help everyone from students to Alzheimer’s patients.

BBC Future

• David Robson

When trying to memorise new material, it’s easy to assume that the more work you put in, the better you will perform. Yet taking the occasional down time – to do literally nothing – may be exactly what you need. Just dim the lights, sit back, and enjoy 10-15 minutes of quiet contemplation, and you’ll find that your memory of the fac

ts you have just learnt is far better than if you had attempted to use that moment more productively.

Although it’s already well known that we should pace our studies, new research suggests that we should aim for “minimal interference” during these breaks – deliberately avoiding any activity that could tamper with the delicate task of memory formation. So no running errands, checking your emails, or surfing the web on your smartphone. You really need to give your brain the chance for a complete recharge with no distractions.

An excuse to do nothing may seem like a perfect mnemonic technique for the lazy student, but this discovery may also offer some relief for people with amnesia and some forms of dementia, suggesting new ways to release a latent, previously unrecognised, capacity to learn and remember.

 

A simple technique could boost our short and long-term memory. Credit: Getty Images.

The remarkable memory-boosting benefits of undisturbed rest were first documented in 1900 by the German psychologist Georg Elias Muller and his student Alfons Pilzecker. In one of their many experiments on memory consolidation, Muller and Pilzecker first asked their participants to learn a list of meaningless syllables. Following a short study period, half the group were immediately given a second list to learn – while the rest were given a six-minute break before continuing. 

When tested one-and-a-half-hours later, the two groups showed strikingly different patterns of recall. The participants given the break remembered nearly 50 percent of their list, compared to an average of 28 percent for the group who had been given no time to recharge their mental batteries. The finding suggested that our memory for new information is especially fragile just after it has first been encoded, making it more susceptible to interference from new information.

Although a handful of other psychologists occasionally returned to the finding, it was only in the early 2000s that the broader implications of it started to become known, with a pioneering study by Sergio Della Sala at the University of Edinburgh and Nelson Cowan at the University of Missouri. 

 

We could all do with fewer distractions in our lives. Credit: Getty Images.

The team was interested in discovering whether reduced interference might improve the memories of people who had suffered a neurological injury, such as a stroke. Using a similar set-up to Muller and Pilzecker’s original study, they presented their participants with lists of 15 words and tested them 10 minutes later. In some trials, the participants remained busy with some standard cognitive tests; in others, they were asked to lie in a darkened room and avoid falling asleep.

The impact of the small intervention was more profound than anyone might have believed. Although the two most severely amnesic patients showed no benefit, the others tripled the number of words they could remember – from 14 to 49 percent, placing them almost within the range of healthy people with no neurological damage. 

The next results were even more impressive. The participants were asked to listen to some stories and answer questions an hour later. Without the chance to rest, they could recall just 7 percent of the facts in the story; with the rest, this jumped to 79 percent – an astronomical 11-fold increase in the information they retained. 

Della Sala and Cowan’s former student, Michaela Dewer at Heriot-Watt University, has now led several follow-up studies, replicating the finding in many different contexts. In healthy participants, they have found that these short periods of rest can also improve our spatial memories, for instance – helping participants to recall the location of different landmarks in a virtual reality environment. Crucially, this advantage lingers a week after the original learning task, and it seems to benefit young and old people alike. And besides the stroke survivors, they have also found similar benefits for people in the earlier, milder stages of Alzheimer’s disease. 

 

Our memory for new information is especially fragile just after it has been encoded. Credit: Getty Images.

In each case, the researchers simply asked the participants to sit in a dim, quiet room, without their mobile phones or similar distractions. “We don’t give them any specific instructions with regards to what they should or shouldn’t do while resting,” Dewar says. “But questionnaires completed at the end of our experiments suggest that most people simply let their minds wander.” 

Even then, we should be careful not to exert ourselves too hard as we daydream. In one study, for instance, participants were asked to imagine a past or future event during their break, which appeared to reduce their later recall of the newly learnt material. So it may be safest to avoid any concerted mental effort during our down time. 

The exact mechanism is still unknown, though some clues come from a growing understanding of memory formation. It is now well accepted that once memories are initially encoded, they pass through a period of consolidation that cements them in long-term storage. This was once thought to happen primarily during sleep, with heightened communication between the hippocampus – where memories are first formed – and the cortex, a process that may build and strengthen the new neural connections that are necessary for later recall. 

 

The brain might use downtime to cement what it has recently learnt. Credit: Getty Images.

This heightened nocturnal activity may be the reason that we often learn things better just before bed. But in line with Dewar’s work, a 2010 study by Lila Davachi at New York University, found that it was not limited to sleep, and similar neural activity occurs during periods of wakeful rest, too. In the study, participants were first asked to memorise pairs of pictures – matching a face to an object or scene – and then allowed to lie back and let their minds wander for a short period. Sure enough, she found increased communication between the hippocampus and areas of the visual cortex during their rest. Crucially, people who showed a greater increase in connectivity between these areas were the ones who remembered more of the task, she says. 

Perhaps the brain takes any potential down time to cement what it has recently learnt – and reducing extra stimulation at this time may ease that process. It would seem that neurological damage may render the brain especially vulnerable to that interference after learning a new memory, which is why the period of rest proved to be particularly potent for stroke survivors and people with Alzheimer’s disease. 

Other psychologists are excited about the research. “The effect is quite consistent across studies now in a range of experiments and memory tasks,” says Aidan Horner at the University of York. “It’s fascinating.” Horner agrees that it could potentially offer new ways to help individuals with impairments to function. 

 

Scheduling regular periods of rest could help us all hold onto new memories. Credit: Getty Images.

Practically speaking, he points out that it may be difficult to schedule enough periods of rest to increase their overall daily recall. But he thinks it could still be valuable to help a patient learn important new information – such as learning the name and face of a new carer. “Perhaps a short period of wakeful rest after that would increase the chances that they would remember that person, and therefore feel more comfortable with them later on.” Dewar tells me that she is aware of one patient who seems to have benefitted from using a short rest to learn the name of their grandchild, though she emphasises that it is only anecdotal evidence.

Thomas Baguley at Nottingham Trent University in the UK is also cautiously optimistic. He points out that some Alzheimer’s patients are already advised to engage in mindfulness techniques to alleviate stress and improve overall well-being. “Some [of these] interventions may also promote wakeful rest and it is worth exploring whether they work in part because of reducing interference,” he says, though it may be difficult to implement in people with severe dementia, he says. 

Beyond the clinical benefits for these patients, Baguley and Horner both agree that scheduling regular periods of rest, without distraction, could help us all hold onto new material a little more firmly. After all, for many students, the 10-30 percent improvements recorded in these studies could mark the difference between a grade or two. “I can imagine you could embed these 10-15 minute breaks within a revision period,” says Horner, “and that might be a useful way of making small improvements to your ability to remember later on.” 

In the age of information overload, it’s worth remembering that our smartphones aren’t the only thing that needs a regular recharge. Our minds clearly do too.

David Robson is a freelance writer based in London. He is @d_a_robson on Twitter. 

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5 Things You Can Do For A Better Brain

5 Things You Can Do For A Better Brain
Every one of us likes to know how to get our brains working at top performance, so here's a post that can help you improve your brain function:


Reduce the mental decline that begins in mid-age by making moderate changes in your diet and lifestyle.

I can remember a survey I looked at years ago indicated that “maintaining mental sharpness” was the #1 health issue for 65% of the people questioned. I don’t think much has changed. Brain health is a huge concern for many people, most likely because poor brain function equates to poor quality of life. There is no doubt that we live in a society that demands our brains work 100% - we constantly juggle facts, inputs, information, tasks, responsibilities, and process emotions. And at the same time, the statistics are showing us increased rates of cognitive decline and dementia are becoming some of the biggest health issues in the 21^st century.

How can you prevent the mental downslide that starts in mid-age? You can buffer your brain against mild decline and even more severe reduced function with dementia by taking some steps in what you eat and how you live.

De-stress With Colouring Books

Colouring helps to focus the mind and release stress

 Colouring has become very popular recently to relieve stress.  It promotes creativity and improves memory and cognitive flexibility as well as focusing the mind.  Anything that reduces stress in our busy lives has to be a good things.

 

• Stress affects up to 83 percent of the workforce in the U.S. and contributes to several health problems, including cardiovascular disease, immune-mediated disease and fertility problems, and can trigger system-wide inflammation
• Coloring can help your mind to focus and may reduce stress levels
• Coloring can also improve your memory and cognitive flexibility