Looking for a memory boost? Forget crossword puzzles and get more sleep

‘Do more crossword puzzles… play a brain-training game… take some ginkgo biloba,’ These are all frequently-cited pieces of ‘helpful’ advice to those who are trying to remain cognitively sharp—especially in their older years. However, evidence remains scant or nonexistent in most cases to support the claims that these activities actually work to keep your brain healthy. Crossword puzzles have very weak evidence of being able to improve cognition, and even where tenuous links have been found, it’s on very specific types of cognition (most notably cognitive ‘fluency’). But the benefits are thought to come more from basic participation in any cognitively stimulating activities or continuing personal education by the individual—and not the activity itself. Which begs the question what can people do to help stave off the memory impairment that comes with aging—if anything at all? Brain training has taken many forms over the past decade, and various types are available in a dizzying array of formats and styles on smartphones and desktop PCs. It has become a lucrative industry— although it suffered a major blow when the feds cracked down on the popular brain training app Lumosity—but as with many nutritional supplements, there is very little data to suggest that so-called brain training actually does any training whatsoever. Across many studies, there is unbelievably weak evidence for ‘brain training’ offering long-term benefits or anything generalizable to real-world thinking skills. If you haven’t seen the term before, ‘nootropics’ refers to supplements which are purported or marketed to boost cognitive power. The idea of nootropics certainly isn’t new, and humans have been consuming plant-based agents intended as nootropics for millennia, including: khat, coca leaves, ephedra, caffeine (coffee, tea), nicotine, ginkgo biloba, etc. Many elicit their effects through simple stimulation of the central nervous system, causing increased alertness and vigilance by […]

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