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Next Up, a Gym for the Mind Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg, brain scientist 
If you want to live long and strong, you’ve got to do more than work out your body; you’ve got to exercise your brain, insists Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg, clinical professor of neurology at New York University School of Medicine. While we’ve heard for years that mental stimulation can stave off dementia and Alzheimer’s, Dr. Goldberg says scientists now know exactly how to keep our brains from turning to mush – by stimulating the growth of new neurons and interconnections between them that boost brain efficiency. If you don’t use your brain in new and novel ways, your brain won’t be fit to use. As the chief scientific adviser for SharpBrains.com, Dr. Goldberg’s site offers an array of brain teasers and exercises that improve brain function. But online tests are not all you can do. Just do something different and challenging. Getting out of your middle-aged comfort zone is the difference in a high quality of life when you’re older than none at all. Q: Why would you want to sharpen your brain? A: The brain is a very elastic organ. Just as other parts of the body, it can be influenced by what you do with it and fail to do with it. It’s particularly important for people who are in the age bracket when cognitive declines happens in certain people. For those people, it is important to exercise the brain to insure its longevity and sharpness. It’s just as important as taking care of one’s cardiovascular health. [Cognitive decline] starts in a significant way in the 50s. It certainly becomes quite noticeable as some people enter their 60s and certainly in their 70s. Q: How can you tell if your brain is in decline? A: Certain aspects of memory, certain aspects of attention, certain executive functions, decision-making and problem-solving in many people begins to erode. Q: You advocate certain computer games designed to promote brain health. How can a game be good for your brain? A: We have assumed all along that casual activity like crossword puzzles and Suduko are good for you. We have accumulated knowledge to take it a step beyond that by targeting various aspects of the mind. Those are being created; it’s still a new art form, so there is plenty of room for improvement. Then you can assemble something not dissimilar from health club, but a gym for the mind. Q: For example? A: Attention, for instance. We know there are several forms of attention: sustained attention, divided attention, selective attention ... Laypeople talk about attention as if it’s a simple construct. There certain exercises, such as following and monitoring several streams of information in parallel and making certain decisions, responding to certain signals, any complex mental functional usually involving more than one part [of the brain, such as] the frontal lobe, the arousal activation system and ventral brain stem. 
Q: “Use it or lose it” seems to be your mantra. You challenge middle-aged and older adults to operate outside of their comfort zones so their brains will create more neurons and brain interconnections that will stave off decline and make brains work even better. How have you done so? A: By writing books, teaching students and engaging in various intentional diversions as challenging activities. We tend to go into mental autopilot as we age; these are highly automatic processes. Because autopilot has made [our] lives effortless, it’s easy but does not serve the function of protecting one’s brain. This may be very good for practicing our professions, but it is not how you stimulate your brain, as I have written in my book “The Wisdom Paradox.” Q: What extremely bright people in history have challenged themselves to function outside of their areas of expertise? A: [Albert] Einstein played the violin and sailed boats. Winston Churchill painted acrylics. They enjoyed doing something different from their daily lives. I wrote a book, then another. If somebody told me I would be writing general-interest trade books, I would have dismissed it as implausible. I thought, “I’m entrenched in my autopilot, and I need to reinvent myself.” I’m quite established as a scientist and clinician, but I just felt my brain was yearning for something new. Q: How does our brain change with age? A: Two decades ago, we thought new neurons cannot be born, that we can lose neurons but cannot replace them. Recent science has demonstrated the birth of new connections, new neurons continue to be born throughout the whole lifespan. These processes are influenced by the nature of one’s mental activities. Neurons do die. The question is to what extent we replace them with new ones. That is influenced to a large extent by the kind of vigor and type of mental activity we engage in. Q: So creating new connections [between neurons] improves the brain’s ability to process information and to work with more speed and efficiency, sort of a like a computer? A: I think the analogy is better with heart disease. Very few things in biology are all or none. Most processes in biology are determined by multiple factors. Heredity and genetics are one factor. But lifestyle is another such factor. It would be silly to say that lifestyle overrides heredity 100 percent. Even if it contributes a third of the value, it’s still valuable. The same with heart disease. If heart disease or stroke is in your genes, the odds are against you, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t engage in vigorous exercises or healthy dieting to counteract bad genes to the maximum extent possible. Even if you counteract them by 20 percent or 30 percent, that, too, is valuable. Q: Do certain jobs or careers predict ability to maintain highly efficient brains? A: Any career which eschews a mechanical, routine activity and calls for constantly dealing with novelty and invention are the ones that protect us the most. Q: How often should we exercise our brains? A: I advise maybe three times a week or 45 minutes to an hour. It should be worked into an individual’s lifestyle. Q: What if I don’t like crossword puzzles and Suduko? Will my brain turn to mush? A: We must challenge our brains and not be seduced by the comfort of mental autopilot. Thomas Edison said there’s no length the human being would go to avoid the hard work of thinking. Thinking is often harder than doing. People should not avoid mental challenges, they should embrace them. |
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