May 11 , 2004 — As we saw in the segment, "Keeping Old Brains Young" Alan learns from Gary Small that simple brain training helps stimulate growth and maintain health. In this excerpt from Gary Small's book The Memory Bible, learn about what you can do to help keep your brain young.
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Brain Training
Scientific evidence points to mental stimulation and brain training as a way to maintain healthy brains throughout life. Suggestive evidence indicates that anything we do to exercise our brains in a new way may help to develop new nerve pathways that can help to forestall the effects of Alzheimer's disease. Most of these approaches are inexpensive, not harmful, and certainly worth a try.

Brain Workouts Through Creative Thinking: Puzzles and Brain-Teasers

The information in our brains is passed through billions of dendrites or extensions of brain cells, similar to branches of a tree, which grow smaller as they extend outward. Without use, our dendrites can shrink or atrophy; but when we exercise them in new and creative ways, their connections remain active as they pass new information along. And, remarkably, new dendrites can be created even after old ones die.

Evidence shows we can "workout" our dendrites and extend their branches in many ways. Even routine daily activities like lacing a shoe or rinsing dishes can be a trip to the gym for those little guys. Try tying your shoelaces backwards or brushing your teeth with your left hand (if you're right handed) - both could stimulate a neuron or two. Basically, any conscious effort to tease your brain can potentially create new brain cell connections.

The fun of solving puzzles and brain-teasers often comes from pushing ourselves to make a mental leap from existing assumptions to find a new solution to a seemingly unsolvable problem. To do so, we need to break loose and explore the problem, puzzle, or brainteaser in a new way.

When we view certain visual images, we often fix on seeing them in one way, as in the vase below:

If you look again and think of the vase as background instead of foreground, you may see the profiles of two people.

In the figure below, you probably see the green arrows. Try to see the figure from a different perspective and push those green arrows into the background. Can you now see the arrows emerge facing the opposite direction?

Sometimes our mental assumptions actually distort reality. Look at the figure below. Does the upper line appear longer than the lower one?

Take a ruler and measure the two lines and you'll see that they are the identical length. The above exercises are basic examples of visual brainteasers, the type that can and should become a part of your daily mental aerobic workout.
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