Good inter­view with Posit Sci­ence’s Dr. Michael Merzenich. (Thanks, Steve!)

Includes the quote “Peo­ple can be active learn­ers by learn­ing in new forms and in new domains. It’s not just being active and get­ting up every day. The brain is a learn­ing machine, and it needs to be engaged in new learn­ing of dif­fer­ent dimen­sions. The best kinds of exer­cise are those that chal­lenge. For exam­ple, to mas­ter a musi­cal instru­ment at an old­er age is a won­der­ful thing. Or, seri­ous­ly under­tak­ing the mas­tery of a sec­ond lan­guage is a won­der­ful thing to do. One of the prob­lems with such exer­cis­es is that it’s very hard to main­tain the skills and abil­i­ties nec­es­sary to main­tain a men­tal fit­ness pro­gram.”

You can read our pre­vi­ous Brain Coach Answers post on why cross­words and sudoku aren’t suf­fi­cient brain exer­cise.