In Ses­sion 2 we showed that brain main­te­nance includes bal­anced nutri­tion, stress man­age­ment, phys­i­cal exer­cise and brain exer­cise. We also reported that numer­ous stud­ies have shown that intel­lec­tual activ­ity in gen­eral is good for the brain and may help build up cog­ni­tive reserve.

The next ques­tion we need to clar­ify is, How is brain train­ing or brain exer­cise dif­fer­ent from daily men­tal activ­i­ties? Let’s take the exam­ple of phys­i­cal activ­ity. There is a clear dif­fer­ence between phys­i­cal activ­ity and phys­i­cal exer­cise. Phys­i­cal activ­ity occurs when­ever we move our body or engage in a leisure activ­ity that involves mov­ing our body (e.g., play­ing pool). Phys­i­cal exer­cise (e.g. jog­ging) refers to the repeated and struc­tured activ­ity of par­tic­u­lar parts of our bod­ies. While both phys­i­cal activ­ity and phys­i­cal exer­cise may bring ben­e­fits, it is the lat­ter that helps build capac­ity and mus­cles strength, con­tribut­ing to stay­ing fit as we age.

Sim­i­larly, brain “train­ing”, or brain “exer­cise”, goes beyond men­tal activ­ity. Men­tal activ­ity takes place when­ever one is awake, rang­ing from merely day dream­ing to read­ing a book or learn­ing a new lan­guage. Men­tal exer­cise or brain train­ing refers to the struc­tured use of cog­ni­tive exer­cises or tech­niques. Its aim is to improve spe­cific brain functions.

Under­stand­ing the dif­fer­ence between men­tal activ­ity and men­tal exer­cise is cru­cial. For instance, many peo­ple feel that they are doing the best for their brain after hav­ing com­pleted their daily puz­zle. How­ever cross­word puz­zles chal­lenge a rel­a­tively nar­row range of cog­ni­tive skill and thus stim­u­late only a lim­ited range of brain regions. A 1999 study showed that increased amount of expe­ri­ence in doing cross­word puz­zles does not mod­ify the effect of age mea­sured in tasks requir­ing vocab­u­lary and rea­son­ing (Ham­brick et al.,1999). Cross­words puz­zles gen­er­ate men­tal activ­ity but they do not con­sti­tute a brain train­ing program!

This points out to the key word in brain train­ing: vari­ety. One needs a vari­ety of chal­leng­ing exer­cises in order to stim­u­late the whole brain. Recent rec­om­men­da­tions made by a panel of experts review­ing a poll by the Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging (2006) stated: “A sin­gle activ­ity, no mat­ter how chal­leng­ing, is not suf­fi­cient to sus­tain the kind of men­tal acu­ity that vir­tu­ally every­one can achieve.” Even if one’s goal is to improve mem­ory func­tions, other brain func­tions need stim­u­la­tion to achieve that goal. For instance, atten­tion and con­cen­tra­tion are essen­tial to good memorization.

Sys­tem­atic brain train­ing pro­grams can be designed to lead to brain change in a more effi­cient way that ran­dom daily activ­i­ties may. A com­bi­na­tion of both may be ideal. Learn­ing a com­plex skill such as learn­ing the piano helps train and develop some parts of the brain. Well-designed train­ing pro­grams may help train and develop other parts.
Defined as the struc­tured use of cog­ni­tive exer­cises or tech­niques aimed at improv­ing spe­cific brain func­tions, brain train­ing includes a range of research-supported tech­niques or approaches, such as cog­ni­tive ther­apy and med­i­ta­tion, along with the most pop­u­lar brain fit­ness soft­ware. This guide is focused on soft­ware pro­grams but will also dis­cuss other approaches.

Keep learn­ing by read­ing more arti­cles in the Resources sec­tion, and also please con­sider join­ing our free monthly Brain Fit­ness eNewsletter

This new online resource is based on the con­tent from the book The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness (May 2009, $19.95), by Alvaro Fer­nan­dez and Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg.

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