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CBS News and TIME mag­a­zine are team­ing up for a five-part series on the “The Com­pli­cat­ed, Mes­mer­iz­ing World of the Brain”. The first report by CBS Evening News con­trib­u­tor Dr. San­jay Gup­ta focused on neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty – “the brain’s abil­i­ty to reor­ga­nize itself by cre­at­ing new brain cells through men­tal and phys­i­cal exercises.”

Dr. Gup­ta inter­viewed Arthur Kramer, Ph.D., a pro­fes­sor of psy­chol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois who stud­ied the effects of exer­cise, diet, and social and men­tal stim­u­la­tion on old­er adults. Accord­ing to Kramer, the break through anti-aging treat­ment is exercise.

We found in our study that walk­ing will increase the vol­ume of the brain, increase the effi­cien­cy of the brain and increase improve­ments in the num­ber of cog­ni­tive func­tions such as mem­o­ry and attention.

Kramer and McAuley’s research showed that aer­o­bic exer­cise led to increased brain vol­ume in the pre­frontal and tem­po­ral cor­tices – areas that show con­sid­er­able age-relat­ed deterioration.

To go beyond phys­i­cal exer­cise and look at men­tal exer­cise, Dr. Gup­ta also inter­viewed Michael Merzenich, Ph.D. of UCSF and Posit Sci­ence. Merzenich said, “The brain is actu­al­ly revis­ing itself. It is actu­al­ly plas­ti­cal­ly chang­ing itself as you devel­op new skills and abil­i­ties, as you learn new things.” Merzenich has been study­ing neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and how the brain changes with expe­ri­ence since the 1980s.

To Catch the Series, Here’s the Schedule:
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