Brain Improvement

by:  Michael S. Logan

If only there were a way to do brain improvement. That would be the ticket to fame and fortune, right?

If you are like me, at 62 years young, with small children scampering about the family room, well, one is 11, eats like a horse, and cannot wait for the day when he can fling his father around as I have done him, you have some concerns about the changes that you find your brain undergoing, and if you are struggling to find just the right word at just the right time, there is hope for brain improvement.

There is emerging research, some of it being taken very seriously, that we can recapture our memory and attention, even increase our IQ, using computerized brain fitness programs as part of what we do to encourage neurogenesis and neuroplasticity.

Never heard of those two terms?

Neurogenesis means that we grow new neurons every day, and the discovery of that capacity of the human brain is just a few years old.

However, those new neurons do not stick if we do not make our brains a hospitable place, which we do by attending to the pillars of brain fitness.

Neuroplasticity means that our brains rewire themselves when we learn something new. That is the good news, the bad news is that we have to do a little repetition or keep the learning going or the brain deletes those unused circuits.

Neuroplasticity happens withing minutes, according to Simon Evans, PhD. and Paul Burghardt,Ph.D, authors of Brainfit for Life which is an excellent guide to the brain improvement process.

One of the nice things about Professors Evans and Burghardt is the nice layman language they write in, coupled with a sly sense of humor, which makes the book accessible to non-neuroscientist brains.

The Pillars of Brain Improvement

So our brain does grow new neurons, but we need to make our brains a hospitable environment to insure that they survive, and become involved in the memory process.

We do that by attending to the Pillars of Brain Improvement, which means we get some exercise, we eat well including some omega 3 fatty oil daily, sleep well, manage our stress, and make sure we are getting some novel learning experiences daily. Evans and Burghardt walk us through an exploration of how each of the pillars works for us.

Please rest assured that all of us, not matter what our age, can work on the pillars of brain improvement and grow new neurons for neuroplasticity.

This is not an olympic sport, requiring olympic training. So on to the physical activity/exercise pillar.

Evans and Burghardt say this is the most important pillar of brain improvement, and the good news is that we can get the requisite level of physical activity by doing more of what we already do. So if you walk outside, walk a little longer a little faster, so that you are breathing deeply enough to make breathing and talking difficult. No need to fling around heavy barbells, or join and expensive club, at least not to start. But the more exercise you do, the better the environment there is for those new neurons.

Evans and Burghardt next explore the nutritional requirements of the brain, and why it is very important for us to get regular daily doses of plant based antioxidants and fish or plant based omega 3 fatty acid. That is right, for brain improvement, you need to put a stop to processed foods, high fructose corn syrup, msg, ect. If you do not like fish, or do not have time to prepare many fish dishes, perhaps you will need to look at an omega 3 fatty acid supplement. Evans and Burghardt go on to talk about the importance of regular sleep and stress management for the neurogenesis and neuroplasticity process, and then spend a significant amount of time talking about the novel learning experience brain improvement pillar.

The experts say that the kind of learning most beneficial to the brain improvement process is the learning that we experience when learning a new language or a new instrument.

If you are like me, you do not have enough time to learn a new instrument of language, so I have looked long and hard at the computerized brain fitness programs, as a time efficient replacement for studying Spanish, for example.

The emerging research including the PNAS and IMPACT studies are very encouraging to me, so I bought the tools discussed in those research projects, and I have practiced them.

My experience has been excellent. They are fun, efficient, and offer an acceptable level of challenge and reinforcement for neurogenesis and neuroplasticity. So I would suggest that the computerized brain improvement programs are an acceptable part of any brain improvement training one undertakes.

About the Author:

Michael S. Logan is a brain fitness expert, counselor, a student of Chi Gong, and a licensed one on one HeartMath provider. I enjoy the spiritual, the mythological, and psychological, and I am a late life father to Shane, 10, and Hannah Marie, 4, whose brains are so amazing. http://www.askmikethecounselor2.com