To stimulate your brain, find new ways to challenge yourself every day

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woman brain activity surroundings—–

For Effec­tive Brain Fit­ness, Do More Than Play Sim­ple Games (The New York Times):

“…Legions of baby boomers already use com­put­ers or apps to stim­u­late the brain, but they should be thought of as part of a larg­er engage­ment with the world…Finding new ways to chal­lenge your­self every day, Mr. Rebok said, is a good idea. This can include lots of ordi­nary activ­i­ties like doing men­tal cal­cu­la­tions rather than reach­ing for a cal­cu­la­tor, or tak­ing a new dri­ving route or eat­ing with the oppo­site hand…

Mr. Fer­nan­dez of Sharp­Brains said he would like to see a more sys­tem­at­ic way to mea­sure cog­ni­tion, such as annu­al men­tal health check­ups. “If we had bet­ter assess­ments, we could empow­er con­sumers,” he said. “That’s the next frontier.”

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  1. Dr. Michael Trayford says

    This was a great arti­cle and glad to see you all men­tioned in it! You pro­vide a tremen­dous resource at SB for those with a quest for brain-based knowl­edge. It was unfor­tu­nate to find the com­ments already shut down for this arti­cle on the NY Times site as fur­ther dis­cus­sion is war­rant­ed for the best inter­est of the pop­u­la­tion-at-large; par­tic­u­lar­ly the boomers and seniors for which it was writ­ten. While brain games are cer­tain­ly part of the equa­tion; arti­cles such as this one should always include men­tion of biochemical/metabolic and envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors such as caloric intake and blood sug­ar han­dling, inflam­ma­tion, stress man­age­ment, etc. Teach­ing cours­es of this nature through our local UNC sys­tem I find that these folks are only get­ting one side of the sto­ry from most of the sources they read and often have tran­si­tion­al expe­ri­ences when pre­sent­ed with the blend­ing of all fac­tors relat­ed to brain health (diet, exer­cise, stress man­age­ment, sleep, brain games…), and how they in fact are depen­dent on one anoth­er. Thanks again for your great work — I rec­om­mend folks to SB all the time.