How to get a fast brain

Brain Health, brain processing speed seems to be an issue this month because both the Duke Medicine Health News and the Berkeley Wellness Letter featured articles on brain health. 

Duke even had a diagram to help us all understand how the brain works. This is it. I get clicking from my knees but perhaps the clicks are from inside my head.

Just in case you are wondering, the numbers in the diagram have some meaning:

1. Pre-frontal cortex which governs working memory
2. Primary auditory cortex for sound analysis and recognition
3. Wernicke's Area for speech recognition.

The people the research looked at were all healthy and aged 65 and up who did 8 weeks of brain exercises aimed at increasing brain speed. The results were amazing, possibly too good to be true, in that the people involved doubled their memory scores as compared to those who did not go through the 8 weeks of brain exercise.

So what exactly did they do ?

There were 6 different activities which started with separating low-pitched and high-pitched sounds. The machine used started to play the sounds slowly and distinctly but then gently increased the pace until the sounds started to fuse together. 

The details are in this paper but it is a challenge to read !

The Berkeley Wellness piece was nothing like as geeky as Duke's effort. Berkeley said that the brain does not change with age but it does process information more slowly with age. The slowdown starts at about 15. Berkeley quoted the same research as Duke but added the thought that the brain speed improvement seen by the researchers was probably only temporary.

So what to do:

• Exercise. This probably helps the brain by increasing blood flow and reducing blood pressure
• Keep using your brain to learn on a lifetime basis
• Blood Pressure - keep it down
• Diabetes - avoid if you can as the high levels of insulin which go along with Type 2 diabetes are associated with a declining memory
• Keep weight down
• Taking statins to keep cholesterol down on balance is good for the brain
• Raise good cholesterol [HDL] as there is a theory that HDL helps block formation of plaque in the brain. How do you raise HDL ? Intense exercise, if your body will take it, is the best approach.
• Aspirins (and similar) seem to reduce chronic inflammation that plays a role in Alzheimer's
• Healthy diet - a Mediterranean type diet
• Depression - get treatment as depression reduces mental activity.

Sharp Brains Guide to Brain Fitness might be worth looking at.