Improve cognitive efficiency -
NIA and other organizations are supporting research to determine whether different types of cognitive training have lasting effects. For more information, see Participating in Activities You Enjoy.
Connecting with other people through social activities and community programs can keep your brain active and help you feel less isolated and more engaged with the world around you. Participating in social activities may lower the risk for some health problems and improve well-being.
People who engage in personally meaningful and productive activities with others tend to live longer, boost their mood, and have a sense of purpose. Studies show that these activities seem to help maintain their well-being and may improve their cognitive function.
So, visit with family and friends. Consider volunteering for a local organization or join a group focused on a hobby you enjoy. Join a walking group with other older adults. Check out programs available through your Area Agency on Aging , senior center, or other community organizations.
Increasingly, there are groups that meet online too, providing a way to connect from home with others who share your interests or to get support. We don't know for sure yet if any of these actions can prevent or delay Alzheimer's and age-related cognitive decline.
Still, some of these have been associated with reduced risk of cognitive impairment and dementia. Stress is a natural part of life. Short-term stress can even focus our thoughts and motivate us to take action. To help manage stress and build the ability to bounce back from stressful situations, there are many things you can do:.
Genetic , environmental , and lifestyle factors are all thought to influence cognitive health. Some of these factors may contribute to a decline in thinking skills and the ability to perform everyday tasks such as driving, paying bills, taking medicine, and cooking.
Genetic factors are passed down inherited from a parent to child and cannot be controlled. But many environmental and lifestyle factors can be changed or managed to reduce your risk.
These factors include:. Many health conditions affect the brain and pose risks to cognitive function. These conditions include:.
It's important to prevent or seek treatment for these health problems. They affect your brain as well as your body and receiving treatment for other conditions may help prevent or delay cognitive decline or thinking problems. Older adults are at higher risk of falls, car accidents, and other accidents that can cause brain injury.
Alcohol and certain medicines can affect a person's ability to drive safely and also increase the risk for accidents and brain injury. Learn about risks for falls and participate in fall prevention programs.
Wear helmets and seat belts to help prevent head injuries as well. Overcoming this fear can help you stay active, maintain your physical health, and prevent future falls.
Some drugs and combinations of medicines can affect a person's thinking and the way the brain works. For example, certain ones can cause confusion, memory loss, hallucinations, and delusions in older adults.
Medicines can also interact with food, dietary supplements, alcohol, and other substances. Some of these interactions can affect how your brain functions. Drugs that can harm older adults' cognition include:. Lack of exercise and other physical activity may increase your risk of diabetes, heart disease, depression, and stroke — all of which can harm the brain.
In some studies, physical activity has been linked to improved cognitive performance and reduced risk for Alzheimer's disease.
In general, staying active is known to lower the risk of high blood pressure, stroke, and symptoms of depression, all of which in turn can improve cognitive health. A number of studies link eating certain foods with keeping the brain healthy and suggest that other foods can increase health risk.
For example, high-fat and high-sodium foods can lead to health problems, such as heart disease and diabetes, that can harm the brain. If you adopt these as fundamental guidelines, I guarantee you will be performing at your peak ability, surpassing even what you believe you are capable of— all without artificial enhancement.
Best part: Science supports these principles by way of data! It is no coincidence that geniuses like Einstein were skilled in multiple areas, or polymaths, as we like to refer to them. Geniuses are constantly seeking out novel activities, learning a new domain.
There is only one trait out of the "Big Five" from the Five Factor Model of personality Acronym: OCEAN, or Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism that correlates with IQ, and it is the trait of Openness to new experience.
People who rate high on Openness are constantly seeking new information, new activities to engage in, new things to learn—new experiences in general [2]. When you seek novelty, several things are going on.
First of all, you are creating new synaptic connections with every new activity you engage in. These connections build on each other, increasing your neural activity, creating more connections to build on other connections—learning is taking place.
An area of interest in recent research [pdf] is neural plasticity as a factor in individual differences in intelligence. Plasticity is referring to the number of connections made between neurons, how that affects subsequent connections, and how long-lasting those connections are.
Basically, it means how much new information you are able to take in, and if you are able to retain it, making lasting changes to your brain. Constantly exposing yourself to new things helps puts your brain in a primed state for learning.
Novelty also triggers dopamine I have mentioned this before in other posts , which not only kicks motivation into high gear, but it stimulates neurogenesis—the creation of new neurons—and prepares your brain for learning.
All you need to do is feed the hunger. This particular dopamine receptor, the D1 type, is associated with neural growth and development, among other things.
This increase in plasticity , allowing greater binding of this receptor, is a very good thing for maximizing cognitive functioning. Take home point: Be an "Einstein". Always look to new activities to engage your mind—expand your cognitive horizons.
Learn an instrument. Take an art class. Go to a museum. Read about a new area of science. Be a knowledge junkie. There are absolutely oodles of terrible things written and promoted on how to "train your brain" to "get smarter". I'm going to shatter some of that stuff you've previously heard about brain training games.
Here goes: They don't work. Individual brain training games don't make you smarter —they make you more proficient at the brain training games. Now, they do serve a purpose, but it is short-lived. The key to getting something out of those types of cognitive activities sort of relates to the first principle of seeking novelty.
Once you master one of those cognitive activities in the brain-training game, you need to move on to the next challenging activity. Figure out how to play Sudoku? Now move along to the next type of challenging game.
There is research that supports this logic. A few years ago, scientist Richard Haier wanted to see if you could increase your cognitive ability by intensely training on novel mental activities for a period of several weeks.
They used the video game Tetris as the novel activity, and used people who had never played the game before as subjects I know—can you believe they exist?!
What they found, was that after training for several weeks on the game Tetris, the subjects experienced an increase in cortical thickness, as well as an increase in cortical activity, as evidenced by the increase in how much glucose was used in that area of the brain.
Basically, the brain used more energy during those training times, and bulked up in thickness—which means more neural connections, or new learned expertise—after this intense training. And they became experts at Tetris. Cool, right? However, they remained just as good at Tetris; their skill did not decrease.
The brain scans showed less brain activity during the game-playing, instead of more, as in the previous days.
Why the drop? Their brains got more efficient. Once their brain figured out how to play Tetris, and got really good at it, it got lazy. Efficiency is not your friend when it comes to cognitive growth.
In order to keep your brain making new connections and keeping them active, you need to keep moving on to another challenging activity as soon as you reach the point of mastery in the one you are engaging in.
You want to be in a constant state of slight discomfort, struggling to barely achieve whatever it is you are trying to do, as Einstein alluded to in his quote.
This keeps your brain on its toes, so to speak. When I say thinking creatively will help you achieve neural growth, I am not talking about painting a picture, or doing something artsy, like we discussed in the first principle, Seeking Novelty. When I speak of creative thinking, I am talking about creative cognition itself, and what that means as far as the process going on in your brain.
Contrary to popular belief, creative thinking does not equal "thinking with the right side of your brain". It involves recruitment from both halves of your brain, not just the right.
In order to do this well, you need both right and left hemispheres working in conjunction with each other. Several years ago, Dr Robert Sternberg , former Dean at Tufts University, opened the PACE Psychology of Abilities, Competencies, and Expertise Center, in Boston.
Sternberg has been on a quest to not only understand the fundamental concept of intelligence, but also to find ways in which any one person can maximize his or her intelligence through training, and especially, through teaching in schools. As part of a research study, The Rainbow Project [pdf], he created not only innovative methods of creative teaching in the classroom, but generated assessment procedures that tested the students in ways that got them to think about the problems in creative and practical ways, as well as analytical, instead of just memorizing facts.
He wanted to find out if by teaching students to think creatively and practically about a problem, as well as for memory, he could get them to i Learn more about the topic, ii Have more fun learning, and iii Transfer that knowledge gained to other areas of academic performance.
He wanted to see if by varying the teaching and assessment methods, he could prevent "teaching to the test" and get the students to actually learn more in general.
He collected data on this, and boy, did he get great results. In a nutshell? On average, the students in the test group the ones taught using creative methods received higher final grades in the college course than the control group taught with traditional methods and assessments.
But—just to make things fair— he also gave the test group the very same analytical-type exam that the regular students got a multiple choice test , and they scored higher on that test as well.
That means they were able to transfer the knowledge they gained using creative, multimodal teaching methods, and score higher on a completely different cognitive test of achievement on that same material.
Sound familiar? I mentioned earlier that efficiency is not your friend if you are trying to increase your intelligence. Unfortunately, many things in life are centered on trying to make everything more efficient. This is so we can do more things, in a shorter amount of time, expending the least amount of physical and mental energy possible.
Take one object of modern convenience, GPS. GPS is an amazing invention. I am one of those people GPS was invented for. My sense of direction is terrible. I get lost all the time. So when GPS came along, I was thanking my lucky stars. But you know what? After using GPS for a short time, I found that my sense of direction was worse.
If I failed to have it with me, I was even more lost than before. So when I moved to Boston—the city that horror movies and nightmares about getting lost are modeled after—I stopped using GPS.
I had a new job which involved traveling all over the burbs of Boston, and I got lost every single day for at least 4 weeks. I got lost so much, I thought I was going to lose my job due to chronic lateness I even got written up for it. Through collaboration, a healthcare professional can work with individuals to determine physical and mental activities that complement areas of their cognitive function they may want to enhance.
Cognitive Enhancement. The Impact of Exercise on Brain Health and Preservation November 29, Stress Management Resources October 3, How Yoga Affects the Brain and Body to Reduce Stress October 3, Enhancing Memory Through the Power of Aerobic Exercise August 4, Can Lifestyle Reverse Your Biological Age?
April 26, THE EVIDENCE. As our brains continue to mature during our lifetime, these techniques may help to positively enhance our performance: Aerobic activity can benefit our health in many ways, but consistent aerobic exercise can improve brain processing and play a key role in reducing neurodegeneration.
Performing moderate to vigorous physical activity has been shown to not only improve brain processing but also memory, executive functioning, and subsequent academic performance. Meditation and mindfulness practices can improve attention, memory, speech, cognitive flexibility, and potentially increase cognitive capacity.
Cognitive training programs can have a positive effect on our brain health, and may increase in benefit when paired with exercise.
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