Why you want a superager brain and how to get one

It probably wouldn’t surprise you to hear that keeping your mind active is a way to prevent dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health analyzed a dozen peer-reviewed studies that examined the relationship between late-in-life cognitive activities and the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia. Dr. Deborah Blacker, head researcher on the study, stated that the research “lends support to a potential role for late-in-life cognitive activity in prevention of Alzheimer’s disease.” But what kind of cognitive activities are best? And why, exactly, do they make a difference? To protect your brain, you have to ‘break out’ “The Synapse Project,” showed that familiar activities like listening to classical music or doing word puzzles won’t strengthen your aging brain. Where’s the challenge in that? But, older adults who were asked to take part in activities where they learned a new skill (digital photography or quilting) showed significant increases in memory after spending fifteen hours a week breaking out of their comfort zone. And that’s the ticket… As lead researcher Denise Park of the University of Texas says, “When you are inside your comfort zone you may be outside of the enhancement zone.” In other words, in order to preserve cognitive ability, particularly memory, it’s important to engage in new, unfamiliar and even difficult activities on a regular basis. How stress helps your brain Here’s why we all need some stress in our lives to remain mentally sharp. When we remember something, like where we put our car keys, we’re not reaching in and retrieving that memory from just one part of our brain. We’re constructing the memory from bits and pieces of information that are stored in an “ensemble” of brain regions. Lisa Feldman Barrett, a University Distinguished Professor of […]

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