INTRODUCTION

A Whole New Brain

Poised on a ladder under a pomegranate tree, Bill delights in picking the ripe fruit. As the sun sets behind the coastal mountains, the pines etched in gold, he exults, “What a glorious day!” In that moment, the early evening light seems to shine more brightly.

The brain is…
the most complex thing

we have yet discovered in our
universe. It contains hundreds of
billions of cells interlinked through
trillions of connections. The brain
boggles the mind
.

JAMES D. WATSON,

Nobel laureate

Bill is ninety. He’s as trim as he was during World War II as a major in the U.S. Air Force. Some say he defied gravity — working with passion to build his own business from nothing while savoring every moment.

As a child growing up during the Depression, Bill served neighbors in the teahouse his mother created in their living room. Service is one of his core principles: service to neighbors, community, and country. Whether it’s saying kind words to a stranger, mentoring his friends and children, or fund-raising for charities, when Bill talks about giving, his eyes light up as if he’d found the greatest secret of all. “There’s nothing more rewarding than giving,” he enthuses. “The rewards you get back are so much greater than what you give!”

Bill’s mind is sharp. He excels at bridge and enjoys spirited debates about politics and social issues. He remembers names, faces, dates, and events with ease. Bill contends that remembering names and faces — an ability he developed years before when he took a memory-training course — was one of the keys to his success in the highly competitive automobile sales and service business. One thing Bill learned in his memory course was to bring his full attention when meeting someone for the first time. It doesn’t matter if it’s a waitress or a CEO; he’s genuinely curious about people, and when he focuses on you, it’s as though you’re the most important person in the world.

Bill starts his day with twenty minutes of stretching, sit-ups, and weight training, and then a stroll with his dog, Biscuit. His mental exercise includes jotting down some of the things that make him feel grateful every day. He also reads biographies of great men and women and aims to apply their wisdom in his life.

Although he has some physical ailments, you’d never know it. He’d rather talk about the latest 49ers game than listen to people whine about their problems. “When the conversation starts going south,” he says, “I change the subject.”

When asked, “What’s your secret?” Bill responds, “Curiosity!” He explains, “When I drove to and from work for decades on the same road, I always looked for something I hadn’t noticed before — a new tree, a new fence, a new home. I still do that. Being aware of the small details is one of the ways I stay alert.” Bill offers more sage advice: “Keep learning new things.” “Whatever you do, stay connected to people.” “Practice the Golden Rule.” “Forgive.” And, with a mischievous twinkle in his clear brown eyes, “A little flirting doesn’t hurt either.”

Bill practices, intuitively, much of what you will learn in the pages that follow.

The New Paradigm for Optimal Aging

Who are your role models for aging? What are your expectations and attitudes about the progress of your mind as you get older? Do you expect your memory to be better or worse in ten or twenty years? How about your sex life? What are your fears, concerns, and worries about getting older? Are you hoping that someone will develop the mental equivalent of Viagra?

Let go of the idea
of “anti-aging.” Resistance
against getting older is futile.
Instead, embrace the idea of
aging well, with wisdom
and poise
.

In the past thirty years, the scientific evidence supporting the notion that your mind can improve through the years has become overwhelming. Clearly, the question is no longer whether your mind can improve with age but, rather, how you can optimize your mental powers as you get older.

This book presents practical, evidence-based wisdom to help you answer this question. You’ll learn new skills to increase memory, intelligence, creativity, and concentration. And you’ll cultivate greater confidence and healthy optimism as you discover how to improve your mind as you age.

We’ve interviewed leading experts, including physicians, gerontologists, and neuroscientists; and we’ve studied the practices of men and women who are paragons of healthy aging. Our approach isn’t just based on scientific theory and academic research — we actually apply everything recommended in these pages. And we will guide you to do the same so that you can improve your mind every year of your life.

Over the past three decades, a paradigm shift has taken place in the field of neuroscience. This shift has shattered everything we once believed to be true about the aging brain.

Most of us were raised with faulty ideas about our mental capacity — such as the notion that IQ is fixed at age five, that brain cells degrade yearly after age thirty, and that memory and learning ability inevitably decline with age.

These notions, based on the scientific understanding that was prevalent in the 1950s, are myths — dangerous myths that can stifle our ability to flourish in the second half of life.

Just as Copernicus overturned the myth that the earth was at the center of the universe, so contemporary neuroscience has revolutionized our understanding of the potential to improve mental functioning as we age. We now know the following.

•      Your mental abilities, including memory, are designed to improve throughout life. Neuroscientists call this neuroplasticity (neuro refers to neurons, otherwise known as brain cells, and plasticity is the quality of being changeable or malleable). As neuroscientist Richard Restak, MD, emphasizes, “Your brain is designed to improve with use.”

•      Although some brain cells die as we age, we can generate new cells. Neuroscientists call this neurogenesis. Gene Cohen, MD, PhD, director of the Center for Aging, Health and Humanities at George Washington University, states, “We can indeed form new brain cells, despite a century of being told that it’s impossible.” Your neuronal endowment is so great that even if you lost one thousand brain cells every day for the rest of your life, you would still only be losing less than 1 percent of your total. (Of course, it’s important not to lose the 1 percent that you actually use!)

The brain is not, as was once thought, a compartmentalized, hardwired, static machine whose parts eventually wear out. Instead, it is a highly adaptable and dynamic organ, capable of generating new neurons and improving as we get older. People of average intelligence can, with appropriate training, raise their IQ, enhance their memory, and sharpen their intelligence throughout life.

We will reveal the evidence for this new paradigm and, most importantly, we will show you how to incorporate this new understanding into your life so that, like our friend Bill, you can improve your mind as you age.

THE BRAIN THAT CHANGES ITSELF

Neuroplasticity has been brought to public attention largely through the work of Norman Doidge, MD. In reviewing Doidge’s book The Brain That Changes Itself, the New York Times states, “The power of positive thinking finally gains scientific credibility. Mind-bending, miracle-making, reality-busting stuff…with implications for all human beings, not to mention human culture, human learning and human history.”

Unleashing Your Brain Power for a Synergy of Improvement

You are about to discover that the power of your brain is greater than anything you may have previously imagined. You possess an astounding instrument of intelligence, and you are on the verge of learning how to unleash its vast potential.

In 1941, Sir Charles Sherrington, the Nobel Prize-winning neurophysiologist, referred to the brain as an “enchanted loom” where “millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern, though never an abiding one.” Some twenty years later, Professor Pyotr Anokhin of Moscow State University focused on quantifying the complexity of the enchanted loom by calculating the number of possible thought patterns that the average human brain can make. He concluded that the number of connections is “virtually infinite.” And, more recently, neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni, MD, PhD, of the Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center at UCLA explains, “The brain has an almost boundless capacity for reshaping itself over the years, for adapting, for expanding its power, while accumulating knowledge and recording experiences. Modern neuroscience tells us that the aging brain is no longer the declining brain, but rather a learning organ whose limits are still unexplored.”

If we did all the things
we are capable of doing, we
would literally astound ourselves
.

THOMAS EDISON

SCIENCE AND POETRY EXPRESS THE SAME UNDERSTANDING OF THE AWE-INSPIRING POWER OF THE HUMAN BRAIN

If the human brain were so simple that we could

understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn’t.

— Emerson Pugh, PhD,

in The Biological Origin of Human Values

The brain is wider than the sky,

For, put them side by side,

The one the other will include

With ease, and you beside.

The brain is deeper than the sea,

For, hold them, blue to blue,

The one the other will absorb,

As sponges, buckets do.

— Emily Dickinson

In this book, you’ll discover how to weave the most positive, productive patterns within the infinite loom of your mind. You will activate unused areas of your brain, tone your mental muscles, and enliven all your faculties. And you’ll be amazed to realize just how quickly you can generate positive results.

These techniques are presented in eight chapters, each highlighting an essential aspect of improving your mind as you age. Each chapter sets the stage for the subsequent chapters, and as you learn and practice, you’ll discover that the benefits multiply. You’ll find that this simple, systematic method creates a synergy of improvement.

Although you may be familiar with the idea that continuous learning, healthy diet, and regular exercise are important for cultivating your mind, we will guide you to apply the most reliable, helpful, and practical advice. And you’ll learn things that may be completely new, such as the dramatic effect that attitude has on your longevity, how to use the techniques devised by the ancient Greeks to strengthen your memory, and how to balance your moods and emotions for optimal brain function.

Extensive research reveals that accumulated stress is the greatest cause of age-related mental and physical decline. This book includes a link to download a free Brain Sync: Improve Your Mind as You Age audio program designed to dissolve stress and optimize your mental performance. This easy-to-use audio technology is clinically proven to balance the right and left hemispheres of your brain, creating states of deep calm and high coherence — the same kind of coherence associated with the creativity of great minds like Leonardo da Vinci and Thomas Edison.

But is it really possible to change deep-seated habits? And isn’t our potential limited by genetic predispositions? The debate about the influence of nature (our genetic endowment) versus the influence of nurture (the effects of our upbringing, environment, and education) has engaged scientists through the centuries. Although our genes do play a significant role in determining our capabilities, scientists now agree we can change our habits and develop our minds throughout life. In his book Genome, science writer Matt Ridley concludes, “Mother Nature has plainly not entrusted the determination of our intellectual capacities to the blind fate of a gene.” And cell biologist Bruce H. Lipton, PhD, offers a more personal expression: “I was exhilarated by the new realization that I could change the character of my life by changing my beliefs….I realized that there was a science-based path that would take me from my job as a perennial ‘victim’ to my new position as ‘co-creator’ of my destiny.”

In the first century BCE, the Roman philosopher Seneca realized that we could change our lives by changing our beliefs; he advised that the process of aging “abounds with pleasure if you know how to use it.” Bring more pleasure, fulfillment, and exhilaration to your life by using these proven techniques to improve your mind at any age.