To Harness Neuroplasticity, Start with Enthusiasm

16. Bon voyage!
Enjoy the jour­ney! Get excit­ed about where you’re going. Pas­sion, enthu­si­asm and excite­ment are the most pow­er­ful brain fuels of all. The word enthu­si­asm comes from the Greek entheos, mean­ing “to be divine­ly inspired or pos­sessed by a god”.

Ralph Wal­do Emer­son observed, “Noth­ing great has ever been achieved
with­out enthu­si­asm.”

– Dr Hele­na Popovic MBBS is an Aus­tralia-based med­ical doc­tor, researcher, fit­ness train­er, inter­na­tion­al speak­er and author of In Search of My Father: Demen­tia is no match for a daugh­ter’s deter­mi­na­tion.

To learn more about neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and brain health:

• Solv­ing the Brain Fit­ness Puz­zle Is the Key to Self-Empow­ered Aging
• 15 FAQs on Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and Brain Fitness

Ref­er­ences
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2. Lera Borodit­sky. How Lan­guage Shapes Thought: The lan­guages we speak affect our per­cep­tions of the world, Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can Feb­ru­ary 2011, 62–65.

3. Bar­bara L Fred­er­ick­son PhD. Pos­i­tiv­i­ty: Top-notch research reveals the 3‑to‑1 ratio that will change your life. Three Rivers Press 2009.

4. Y. Fre­und-Levi et al. Omega‑3 fat­ty acid treat­ment in 174 patients with mild to mod­er­ate Alzheimer dis­ease: OmegAD study: a ran­dom­ized dou­ble-blind tri­al, Archives of Neu­rol­o­gy, Octo­ber 2006, 63(10):1402–8.

5. John Med­i­na. Brain Rules: 12 Prin­ci­ples for sur­viv­ing and thriv­ing at work, home and school. Pear Press 2008.

6. John J Ratey and Eric Hage­man. Spark! How exer­cise will improve the per­for­mance of your brain. Quer­cus Pub­lish­ing Plc 2009.

7. GW Rebok et al. Train­ing and main­tain­ing mem­o­ry abil­i­ties in healthy old­er adults: Tra­di­tion­al and nov­el approach­es, Jour­nals of Geron­tol­ogy: SERIES B, 2007, 62B: 53–61.

8. M R Rosen­zweig et al. Effects of envi­ron­men­tal com­plex­i­ty and train­ing on brain chem­istry and anato­my: A repli­ca­tion and exten­sion. Jour­nal of Com­par­a­tive and Phys­i­o­log­i­cal Psy­chol­o­gy, 1962, 55: 429–37.

9. L Shobab, G Hsi­ung and H Feld­man. Cho­les­terol in Alzheimer’s Dis­ease, Lancet Neu­rol­o­gy, 2005, 4:841–52.

10. M Valen­zuela et al. Lifes­pan men­tal activ­i­ty pre­dicts dimin­ished rate of hip­pocam­pal atro­phy, PLoS One, 2008, 3(7):e2598.

11. J Vergh­ese et al. Leisure activ­i­ties and the risk of demen­tia in the elder­ly, New Eng­land Jour­nal of Med­i­cine, 2003, 348:2508–16.

12. G Yue and K J Cole. Strength increas­es from the motor pro­gram: Com­par­i­son of train­ing with max­i­mal vol­un­tary and imag­ined mus­cle con­trac­tions. Jour­nal of Neu­ro­phys­i­ol­o­gy, 1992, 67(5): 1114–23.