Just came back from a pre­sen­ta­tion at the San Fran­cisco Osher Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute, where I am teach­ing a class this fall. This center is part of a net­work of more than 80 cen­ters sup­ported by the Osher Foun­da­tion.

It is the third time I lead this class, and am look­ing for­ward to another fun expe­ri­ence. Work­ing with a num­ber of sci­en­tific advi­sors, we have pre­pared some great infor­ma­tion based on recent brain research, and fun activ­i­ties that exer­cise our key “men­tal muscles”.

Let me give you a flavor:

Accord­ing to sim­pli­fied brain anatomy, we can think of the fol­low­ing major “men­tal mus­cles” and ways to exer­cise them:

1) Cere­bel­lum and brain stem area

- Motor coor­di­na­tion: danc­ing in cou­ples is one of the best activ­i­ties, as well as sports. You can also try to sign with your non-dominant hand

2) Lim­bic sys­tem area

- Emo­tions: see how good you are at iden­ti­fy­ing the feel­ings asso­ci­ated with facial expres­sions  Activ­i­ties like yoga and med­i­ta­tion, and biofeedback-based games, can be very pow­er­ful to help us improve our emo­tional intelligence

- Mem­ory: maybe the eas­i­est tricks are to cat­e­go­rize things (so instead of try­ing to remem­ber we need to do 8 things we struc­ture them in 3–4 groups) and to visu­al­ize fun con­nec­tions (for instance, if you want to remem­ber that you are meet­ing a friend in the cor­ner of Pow­ell and Mar­ket streets, you could visu­al­ize Colin Pow­ell buy­ing a tomato at an organic mar­ket). You can also read about a  very pow­er­ful mem­ory tech­nique that requires train­ing and has been used since clas­sic Greece

3) Neo­cor­tex area

- Lan­guage: cross­words, casual games like Book­Worm  Book­Worm. Maybe write a haiku about the choco­late exper­i­ment below

- Visual/ spa­tial: many casual games, like Tetris

- Senses: well, just get a good piece of choco­late, get into a silent room, close your eyes, and let it melt in your mouth.  At least to me, this made me real­ize how lit­tle atten­tion I pay to my senses

- Exec­u­tive func­tion (plan­ning, problem-solving,…): solve any com­plex real-world prob­lem. Maybe help a local non­profit fundraise, or plan the next hol­i­day vaca­tion if it is not too stressful…or help your kid do his/ her math homework

You can find more Brain Fit­ness infor­ma­tion, and pro­grams, at Sharp­Brains.

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