The Brain

Had an interesting email called the Brain Bulletin. This is a free email from Terry Small which gives interesting information on brain development and the importance of this with aging.

The article starts off (somewhat abridged)
As life expectancy continues to rise, people are doing more and more to ensure that their lives, if long, are going to be healthy. The American Heart Association now recommends 30 minutes of moderate exercise fi ve days a week. Not surprisingly, most large companies
offer health club memberships as a perk; many provide gyms on-site. Find yourself on the road, and you’re almost guaranteed to have a fi tness center in your hotel.

MANAGING YOURSELF Cognitive Fitness

Until recently, however, there seemed to be no guidelines for active efforts you could make to stay mentally healthy. here were no brain exercises – no mental push-ups – you could do to stave off the loss of memory and analytic acuity that comes as you grow older. In the worst-case scenario, you could end up with Alzheimer’s disease, for which there are no proven treatments. But concentrated commitment of resources ... yielded a broad front of research and training that has upended some deeply held beliefs about the brain. One such belief is that the brain necessarily diminishes with age. It turns out that neurons, the basic cells that allow information transfer to support the brain’s computing power, do not have to die off as we get older. In fact, a number of regions of the brain important to functions such as motor behavior and memory can actually expand their complement of neurons as we age. This process, called neurogenesis, used to be unthinkable in mainstream neuroscience. What does all this have to do with you? The process of neurogenesis is profoundly affected by the way you live your life."

The best thing is that the article then goes on with ways that everyone can act to improve their brain capacity. It is really good stuff.

The email is free and anyone can (and should) sign up.