What is Brain Fitness? How to Enhance Brain Fitness?

We define Brain Fit­ness as hav­ing the brain-based cog­ni­tive, emo­tion­al and self-reg­u­la­tion capac­i­ties required to suc­ceed in one’s envi­ron­ment. Not every­one is exposed to the same men­tal demands nor do we all have the same start­ing points. This means we need to stop look­ing for ‘mag­ic pills’ and invest more resources in devel­op­ing toolk­its and infra­struc­ture sim­i­lar to what the phys­i­cal fit­ness indus­try has done over the last 30–40 years.

The fol­low­ing ques­tion guides much of our work at Sharp­Brains: “What tools pro­vide the right kind of expe­ri­ence to refine our brains from a struc­tur­al and func­tion­al point of view to har­ness neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty into real-world ben­e­fits?” We try to pro­vide good infor­ma­tion and answers by con­stant­ly mon­i­tor­ing and ana­lyz­ing the state of sci­ence and the marketplace—and by shar­ing these analy­ses via appro­pri­ate plat­forms with orga­ni­za­tions and indi­vid­u­als. Sharp­Brains doesn’t sell, devel­op or endorse prod­ucts in order to avoid con­flicts of interest.

The main con­text for brain fit­ness is this: The human brain is now con­sid­ered to be a high­ly dynam­ic and con­stant­ly reor­ga­niz­ing sys­tem capa­ble of being shaped—and reshaped—across an entire lifes­pan. Grow­ing evi­dence sup­ports the val­ue of a range of lifestyle fac­tors and non-inva­sive inter­ven­tions in main­tain­ing and enhanc­ing cog­ni­tive func­tions at each life stage—leveraging life­long brain plas­tic­i­ty. In our con­sumer-fac­ing book The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness (May 2009), we empha­size the fol­low­ing four ‘pil­lars’ of brain fit­ness: aer­o­bic phys­i­cal exer­cise, men­tal exer­cise, bal­anced nutri­tion and stress management.

From these, the two gath­er­ing the most research evi­dence are (1.) aer­o­bic phys­i­cal exer­cise and (2.) men­tal exer­cise – par­tic­u­lar­ly struc­tured cog­ni­tive exer­cise such as med­i­ta­tion, cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py and cog­ni­tive train­ing. It’s impor­tant to rec­og­nize that the respec­tive mech­a­nisms and ben­e­fits seem to be dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed and com­ple­men­tary. Aer­o­bic exer­cise appears to bring a wide vari­ety of brain-based (neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis, nerve growth and angio­gen­e­sis) cog­ni­tive ben­e­fits. Men­tal exer­cise may result in addi­tion­al brain-based (neu­ron sur­vival, neu­ron migra­tion) cog­ni­tive benefits—delaying the onset of cog­ni­tive decline, low­er­ing prob­a­bil­i­ty of Alzheimer’s Dis­ease symp­toms and tar­get­ing cog­ni­tive improve­ments with­out a ceil­ing on enhanced results.

At present, a mul­ti-pronged approach appears most like­ly to result in over­all brain health, while tech­nol­o­gy-based assess­ments, ther­a­pies and train­ing tools can guide and deliv­er more tar­get­ed ben­e­fits and become a core com­po­nent of the over­all brain health mix—given effi­cien­cy and scal­a­bil­i­ty. It is impor­tant to note that the Sys­tem­at­ic Evi­dence Review* pub­lished in April 2010 by an inde­pen­dent, NIH-appoint­ed expert pan­el, to sum­ma­rize the state of sci­ence for pre­ven­tion of Alzheimer’s Dis­ease and cog­ni­tive decline, found that the only pro­tec­tive fac­tor (mean­ing, decreas­es risk) against cog­ni­tive decline that is sup­port­ed by the high­est qual­i­ty of evi­dence is cog­ni­tive train­ing (a type of “brain train­ing”). Oth­er fac­tors such as phys­i­cal activ­i­ty, a Mediter­ranean diet and cog­ni­tive engage­ment in gen­er­al also seemed pro­tec­tive when evi­dence of low­er sci­en­tif­ic qual­i­ty was includ­ed in the mix.

*Ref­er­ence: Williams JW, Plass­man BL, Burke J, Holsinger T, Ben­jamin S. Pre­vent­ing Alzheimer’s Dis­ease and Cog­ni­tive Decline. Evi­dence Report/Technology Assess­ment No. 193. (Pre­pared by the Duke Evi­dence-based Prac­tice Cen­ter under Con­tract No. HHSA 290‑2007-10066‑I.) AHRQ Pub­li­ca­tion No. 10-E005. Rockville, MD: Agency for Health­care Research and Qual­i­ty. April 2010. Avail­able online at: (http://www.ahrq.gov/clinic/tp/alzcogtp.htm).