It is Not Only Cars That Deserve Good Maintenance: Brain Care 101

Car mechanicLast week, the US Car Care Coun­cil released a list of tips on how to take care of your car and “save big mon­ey at the pump in 2008.”

You may not have paid much atten­tion to this announce­ment. Yes, it’s impor­tant to save gas these days; but, it’s not big news that good main­te­nance habits will improve the per­for­mance of a car, and extend its life.

If we can all agree on the impor­tance of main­tain­ing our cars that get us around town, what about main­tain­ing our brains sit­ting behind the wheel?

A spate of recent news cov­er­age on brain fit­ness and “brain training” has missed an impor­tant con­stituen­cy: younger peo­ple. Recent advance­ments in brain sci­ence have as tremen­dous impli­ca­tions for teenagers and adults of all ages as they do for seniors.

In a recent con­ver­sa­tion with neu­ro­sci­en­tist Yaakov Stern of Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, he relat­ed how sur­prised he was when, years ago, a reporter from Sev­en­teen mag­a­zine request­ed an inter­view. The reporter told Dr. Stern that he want­ed to write an arti­cle to moti­vate kids to stay in school and not to drop out, in order to start build­ing their Cog­ni­tive Reserve ear­ly and age more gracefully.

What is the Cog­ni­tive Reserve?

Emerg­ing research since the 90s from the past decade shows that indi­vid­u­als who lead men­tal­ly stim­u­lat­ing lives, through their edu­ca­tion, their jobs, and also their hob­bies, build a “Cognitive Reserve” in their brains. Only a few weeks ago anoth­er study rein­forced the val­ue of intel­lec­tu­aly demand­ing jobs.

brainStim­u­lat­ing the brain can lit­er­al­ly gen­er­ate new neu­rons and strength­en their con­nec­tions which results in bet­ter brain per­for­mance and in hav­ing a low­er risk of devel­op­ing Alzheimer’s symp­toms. Stud­ies sug­gest that peo­ple who exer­cise their men­tal mus­cles through­out their lives have a 35–40% less risk of man­i­fest­ing Alzheimer’s.

As astound­ing as these insights may be, most Amer­i­cans still devote more time to chang­ing the oil, tak­ing a car to a mechan­ic, or wash­ing it, than think­ing about how to main­tain, if not improve, their brain performance.

Fur­ther, bet­ter brain scan­ning tech­niques like fMRI (glos­sary) are allow­ing sci­en­tists to inves­ti­gate healthy live brains for the first time in his­to­ry. Two of the most impor­tant find­ings from this research are that our brains are plas­tic (mean­ing they not only cre­ate new neu­rons but also can change their struc­ture) through­out a life­time and that frontal lobes are the most plas­tic area. Frontal lobes, the part of our brains right behind the fore­head, con­trols “exec­u­tive func­tions” — which deter­mine our abil­i­ty to pay atten­tion, plan for the future and direct behav­ior toward achiev­ing goals. They are crit­i­cal for adapt­ing to new sit­u­a­tions. We exer­cise them best by learn­ing and mas­ter­ing new skills.

This part of the brain is del­i­cate: our frontal lobes wait until our mid to late 20s to ful­ly mature. They are also the first part of our brain to start to decline, usu­al­ly by mid­dle age.

In my view, not enough young and mid­dle-aged peo­ple are ben­e­fit­ing from this emerg­ing research, since it has been per­ceived as some­thing “for seniors.” Grant­ed, there are still many unknowns in the world of brain fit­ness and cog­ni­tive train­ing, we need more research, bet­ter assess­ments and tools. But, this does not mean we can­not start car­ing for our brains today.

Recent stud­ies have shown a tremen­dous vari­abil­i­ty in how well peo­ple age and how, to a large extent, our actions influ­ence our rate of brain improve­ment and/or decline. The ear­li­er we begin the bet­ter. And it is nev­er too late.

What can we do to main­tain our brain, espe­cial­ly the frontal lobes? Focus on four pil­lars of brain health: phys­i­cal exer­cise, a bal­anced diet, stress man­age­ment, and brain exer­cise. Stress man­age­ment is impor­tant since stress has been shown to actu­al­ly kill neu­rons and reduce the rate of cre­ation of new ones. Brain exer­cis­es range from low-tech (i.e. med­i­ta­tion, mas­ter­ing new com­plex skills, life­long learn­ing and engage­ment) to high-tech (i.e. using the grow­ing num­ber of brain fit­ness soft­ware pro­grams).

I know, this is start­ing to sound like those lists we all know are good for us but we actu­al­ly don’t do. Let me make it eas­i­er by propos­ing a new New Year Res­o­lu­tion for 2008: every time you wash your car or have it washed in 2008, ask your­self, “What have I done late­ly to main­tain my brain?”

Relat­ed blog posts and resources

- Neu­ro­science Inter­view Series

- Author Speaks Series

- Books

- Arti­cles and Papers

- Direc­to­ry of Web Sites

6 Comments

  1. Roland on January 31, 2008 at 12:17

    You are “right on” with your anol­o­gy of car care and brain fit­ness. Many mid­dle age men and women don’t find time to take care of their mind and bod­ies, but always find the time to care for their cars. Tak­ing care of your brain and body today will allow you many healthy years in retirement.



  2. Alvaro on January 31, 2008 at 1:27

    Roland, thank you for your com­ment. We see more and more adults inter­est­ed in learn­ing more about their brain for their own benefit…so hope­ful­ly in some years “brain main­te­nance” will be an obvi­ous expres­sions and practice.



  3. Jared on February 21, 2008 at 8:23

    Where can i signup to get paid to par­tic­i­pate in these kind of studies

    jreedhome@yahoo.com



  4. Alvaro on February 21, 2008 at 12:37

    Hel­lo Jared, we are not aware of a ser­vice where you sign-up and receive an aggre­gat­ed and updat­ed list of clin­i­cal tri­als. We are going to open an a sec­tion in our site list­ing a num­ber of them, so I rec­om­mend sub­scrib­ing to our newslet­ter to be on top of that.



  5. Jose on March 3, 2008 at 8:41

    I believe that the brain is an essen­tial part of our bod­ies as it rep­re­sents the com­put­er of mod­ern cars with the only dif­fer­ence that a car’s com­put­er can be exchange, but ours can not. That is why it is very impor­tant to take care our com­put­er “mind-body” before think­ing of an oil change. But unfor­tu­nate­ly, this is not a neces­si­ty in this mod­ern soci­ety for since we become more and more spoiled and depen­dent on tech­nol­o­gy. But what is going to hap­pen when our com­put­er does not boot?



  6. Alvaro on March 3, 2008 at 8:06

    Jose: great com­ment. Per­haps we should appre­ci­ate the gift of hav­ing a “com­put­er” in our brains that re-boots itself auto­mat­i­cal­ly every morning…sometimes runs faster on a cof­fee processor…and indeed ben­e­fits from our care.



About SharpBrains

SHARPBRAINS is an independent think-tank and consulting firm providing services at the frontier of applied neuroscience, health, leadership and innovation.
SHARPBRAINS es un think-tank y consultoría independiente proporcionando servicios para la neurociencia aplicada, salud, liderazgo e innovación.

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