Daily Dose of Common Sense

As few as 25 years ago, neuroscientists stuck firmly to the belief that as we aged our brains became fixed and static–hence the saying, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. However, new research is saying otherwise. Enter the relatively new concept of brain plasticity and the related practice of brain fitness.

In the simplest terms, brain plasticity is the brain’s capacity for continuous physical, chemical and functional change. Brain fitness is the purposeful exercising of our gray matter to keep it engaged and healthy.

And, while brain plasticity has bona-fide roots and application in the neuroscientific community, brain fitness seems to be a new ‘it thing’ for some quacky websites, books, training seminars, and even diets. The Wikipedia entry for brain fitness notes, “The term is virtually never used in the scientific literature, but is commonly used in the context of self-help books and commercial products.” But, if you wade through the brain fitness drivel, essentially the premise is use it or lose it. Moreover, how you use it is equally important.

One source lists the following the ideal components of brain fitness activities:

• They should teach you something new.
• They should be challenging.
• They should be progressive.
• They should engage your great brain processing systems.
• They should be rewarding. (My personal favorite.)
• They should be novel or surprising.

And there you have it. In order to maintain our brain health and take advantage of the newfound concept of brain plasticity, we need to continually engage our noggins in new and challenging ways.

Hmmm. I don’t think I need a website or seminar to tell me that.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 28th, 2009 at 7:09 pm and is filed under Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.