Your brain circuitry is not hardwired—it’s actually quite adaptable. The scientific term is plasticity, and although it decreases with age, your adult brain retains a significant capacity to modify itself based on your experiences and how you interact with your environment. Plasticity is considered the basis for learning and memory, and losing it can lead to age-related cognitive decline. But consistently challenging your brain and exposing yourself to new people, places, and experiences can form new brain cells, strengthen neural connections so you can store and retrieve information more easily, and keep your brain young.
Studies show that novelty boosts neural responses. That means doing the same job, and the same hobbies, in the same routine doesn’t necessarily count toward keeping you cognitively active. “If you’re at work doing the same ten activities, is that really cognitively stimulating? Those activities are already programmed,” notes Sarah Lovegreen, M.P.H., health manager with OASIS, a national organization that promotes lifelong learning and service for adults age fifty and older. “So challenging your mind to learn a new skill, think in a new way, challenge opinions, or expose you to new ideas is more effective.”
One way to work novelty into your life is through leisure activities. In one New England Journal of Medicine study, people over seventy-five who participated in hobbies such as reading, playing board games, playing musical instruments, and dancing reduced their risk of dementia. For the best brain benefits, try something you haven’t done before, or at least attempt a variation on the theme. If you enjoy swing dancing, give the tango a twirl. Loved learning French? Challenge yourself to pick up Spanish or Italian. If you play the piano, put down classical music for a while and try your hand at jazz or blues.
Changing your environment can also engage your brain by challenging your visual and spatial memory and stimulating your senses. It can be as dramatic as rearranging your furniture and painting your walls a new color, or as minor as organizing your drawers differently and growing some fragrant herbs. You can also try taking a new route to familiar places like the grocery store.
Crosswords, Sudoku, and other puzzles and memory exercises can be mentally stimulating, and research shows they’re great additions to your brain-boosting toolkit. A 2002 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association followed a group of eight hundred adults over the age of sixty-five to see how participating in stimulating activities protected cognitive function. They found that people who did activities that involved processing information—such as watching TV; listening to the radio; reading newspapers, magazines, and books; playing games such as cards, checkers, crosswords, or other puzzles; and going to museums—nearly every day reduced their risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease by almost 50 percent. And the more cognitively active they were, the less decline they experienced in global cognition (by 47 percent), working memory (by 60 percent), and perceptual speed (by 30 percent), compared to those who rarely or never engaged in stimulating behaviors.
You can also use technology to challenge your brain. For example, a 2009 study in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry found that searching the Internet increases brain activity, especially in the areas of decision making and complex reasoning. And the Wii and Nintendo DS game systems offer brain-teasing games that provide mental stimulation while forcing you to learn how to use the interface.
As powerfully protective as these activities are, however, they don’t offer social connection or physical activity, two other important tenets of brain health. You’ll have an even better brain benefit if you can combine some aspects of intellectual, physical, and social stimulation, notes Lovegreen. If you’d like to learn knitting, see if a local yarn shop or craft store offers group classes. Interested in genetic research at the zoo? Ask if the staff offers lectures or other public programs. If you love to read, see if a local bookstore holds author signings or discussion groups. Or invite a friend to explore a walking or hiking path in a different neighborhood or to take skating lessons with you.