Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Go ahead, boost your brain

ATLANTA — Dr. Majid Fotuhi, an assistant professor in the Department of Neurology at John Hopkins University School of Medicine and chairman of the Neurology Institute for Brain Health and Fitness in Baltimore, recommends several brain boosting exercises:
•Take a class in ballroom dancing. You must pay attention to the sequence of steps, memorize them and then perform them while following the rhythm of the music and movements of your partner.
Benefits: parietal lobes (spatial awareness); frontal lobes (planning of movement) and cerebellum (balance and physical movement)
•Prepare New Recipes. Preparing an unfamiliar dish forces you to follow instructions and co-ordinate the order and timing of each step.
Benefits: Both frontal lobes
•Do Tai Chi. Remembering sequences of the slow motion movements used in tai chi features ballet-like moves, relaxes the brain. Benefits: cerebellum and front lobes.
•Learn to play a new instrument. Mastering the technique of any a new instrument exercises parts of your brain used for fine motor control, auditory processing and procedural thinking. Benefits: both parietal lobes, both frontal lobes and the cerebellum.
•Read the news every day. Reading about news events requires and activates "attention" centres of the brain, mostly the frontal lobes. Benefits: Both frontal lobes.
•Play mind games. If you are stuck in traffic or have some downtime, memorize your credit card numbers or phone numbers of friends. Also good: spell the names of cities backwards.
Benefits: frontal lobes, used in planning and abstract thinking and left temporal lobe, specialized for language functions.

No comments:

Post a Comment