Dr. Michael Merzenich has writ­ten a great post titled “cog­ni­tive reserve is a good thing to work on!. Rec­om­mended read­ing if you are inter­ested in another sci­en­tific per­spec­tive for cog­ni­tive training.

I agree we should know more (as usual), espe­cially for pol­icy deci­sions, but there is enough research, from Mar­ian Dia­mond et al (see beau­ti­ful essays below) work on enriched envi­ron­ments to cog­ni­tive reserve and train­ing, that is shout­ing at all of us: Exer­cise Your Brain! Enjoy Learn­ing! Sta­tis­tics such as that the aver­age American-including kids– watch 5 hours of TV daily… don’t mean “we need more research” but “how can we change this”?.

See a cou­ple of quotes from my recent inter­view with Yaakov Stern on the Cog­ni­tive Reserve.

• “well…I was pretty sur­prised when, years ago, a reporter from Sev­en­teen mag­a­zine requested an inter­view. I was really curi­ous to learn why she felt that her read­ers would be inter­ested in stud­ies about demen­tia. What she told me showed a deep under­stand­ing and insight: she wanted  to moti­vate chil­dren to stay in school. She under­stood that early social inter­ven­tions could be very pow­er­ful for build­ing reserve and pre­vent­ing dementia.”
• “…edu­ca­tion and occu­pa­tion, our level of par­tic­i­pa­tion in leisure activ­i­ties has a sig­nif­i­cant and cumu­la­tive effect. A key mes­sage here is that dif­fer­ent activ­i­ties have inde­pen­dent, syn­er­gis­tic, con­tri­bu­tions, which means the more things you do and the ear­lier you start, the bet­ter. But you are never stuck: bet­ter late than never.”

Two essays by Mar­ian Dia­mond on life­long enrichment:

• Suc­cess­ful Aging of the Healthy Brain: Beau­ti­ful essay on how to keep our brains and minds active and fit through­out our lifetime.
• Response of the Brain to Enrich­ment: Although the brain pos­sesses a rel­a­tively con­stant struc­ture, the ever-changing cere­bral cor­tex is pow­er­fully shaped by expe­ri­ences before birth, dur­ing youth and, in fact, through­out life.

In a recent email exchange, Prof. Dia­mond sum­ma­rized her recipe for healthy aging:

1. Diet,
2. Chal­lenge,
3. Exer­cise,
4. New­ness,
5. Love.

Exer­cise Your Brain-and Body! Enjoy Learning-and Life!

Update: Madam Fathom has written a nice post on this theme titled Read­ing makes you stronger

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