Engage Your Brain

Engage Your Brain
[25 July 2006 - AARP Lifelong Learning] ... Your brain's ability to change and reorganize itself in response to learning and experience affords you a great opportunity: You can choose to follow a lifestyle that maximizes your "brain power," which will keep the engine of learning revved up as you age. Brain experts are convinced that engaging in active learning throughout life will help maintain brain health in our later years. "The brain wants to learn," says Michael Merzenich, PhD, a neurobiologist at University of California, San Francisco. "It wants to be engaged as a learning machine." ... Large, well-designed studies of older adults have clearly shown that a lifestyle that includes stimulating mental activity—especially in terms of social interaction—is associated with successful aging. The largest controlled clinical trial to date, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that cognitive (mental) "training sessions" improved memory, concentration and problem-solving skills in healthy adults ages 65 and older. The effects were powerful and long lasting. More