Neurobics – Exercises to Keep the Brain Young

As we age our brain activity begins to slow down because the organ looses nerve connections and fails to form new ones. While this is a natural process there is a range of activities that can be done to somewhat reverse, or at least slow down, the mental ageing process.

Take Up a New Hobby

It has been noted that learning a new activity works to keep the brain young by keeping it active. Processing new information encourages the brain to form new connections between nerve cells and may even help to generate new cells. A new hobby can be anything from reading or taking a class to craft projects to physical exercise. New experiences trigger the release of dopamine, the neurotransmitter that stimulates motivation and perseverance in an activity and the hormone that encourages the production of new neurons.

Master the Crossword

While word and number games may just seem like a fun pass time they also have profound benefits on the neurological level. These brain exercises force various parts of the brain, such as the areas associated with language, numerical reasoning, and problem solving, to work. Over time this improves the performance of these areas and various studies have suggested that frequent work on crossword or sudoku puzzles may even delay the onset of illnesses such as dementia. This is because mental exercises force the brain to make connections and to recall information which, otherwise, can easily be forgotten as we age.

Keep Things Interesting

Just as important as taking up new activities is knowing when to stop doing an activity. If an exercise becomes habitual and routine your brain has normalized it and is no longer creating new neural connections. Much like if you do not do physical exercise the body will lose strength, without mental stimulation the brain becomes sluggish and slow. Shaking up your daily routine by adding in new elements keeps your brain sharp by constantly giving it new information to process. This can be as simple as taking a new route when you travel somewhere familiar. Instead of going into autopilot with well-established directional knowledge taking an unfamiliar route will actively engage the cortex and the hippocampus to process the new area.

It is inevitable that as the body ages the brain will lose some of the agility it had at peak age, in our mid -20s. However, keeping the brain exercised with novel activities can go a certain way to maintaining a healthy brain.