Excerise your Brain

“I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.”
- Woodrow Wilson, US president

From Scientific American, Six Ways to Boost Brainpower,

1. Physical exercise boosts blood flow and brain growth. Exercise also improves sleep that is essential to the brain.
2. Diet: Although the brain is mostly made of fat, eating the wrong kind of fat will slow you down. Saturated fats = bad, Omega-3 fats (nuts, fish) = good. Too many calories may also make the brain sluggish. Suggested brain foods include walnuts, blueberries and spinach.
3. Stimulants: substances that boost the body will also give move energy to the brain. Caffeine is the drug of choice by millions to wake up the brain. Use in moderation please; too much caffeine will cause jitters, anxiety and insomnia. 100 cups of coffee in one day can be fatal.
4. Video games: improve mental dexterity, while boosting hand-eye coordination, depth perception and pattern recognition.
5. Music: It can treat anxiety and insomnia, lower blood pressure, soothe patients with dementia, and help premature babies to gain weight and leave the hospital sooner. The motor cortex, cerebellum and corpus callosum (which connects the brain’s two sides) are all bigger in musicians than in non-musicians.
6. Meditation: Although the brain’s cells typically fire at all different times, during meditation they fire in synchrony. Expert meditators also show spikes of brain activity in the left prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain that has generally been associated with positive emotions and big boosts in immune system functioning.

Bottom Line
Despite what you learned in school during the Stone Age, adult brains can grow new neurons. Not as fast of course as during youth but an old dog can learn new tricks.