From: hounddog23x@gmail.com   
      
   Brain games: Tricks to help make your aging cerebral matter feel less stupid   
      
   Tricks will help make your aging cerebral matter feel less stupid   
      
   posted July 22, 2015 2:38 p.m. | updated July 26, 2015 12:00 a.m. (CDT)	email   
   article print  font size - +   
   by / Patricia Marx Los Angeles Times   
      
      
      
   Tribune News Service    
      
   - Playing Tetris is one real way you can help help preserve your mental   
   faculties.   
      
      
   Meet my brain.   
   It is the size of basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's fist and consistency   
   of flan, it weighs as much as a two-slice toaster, and it looks like ground   
   round with a high fat content. If you saw it at the butcher's, you'd ask for   
   something a little    
   less beige.   
   If you were a plastic surgeon, you'd say my brain needed a face-lift. The   
   reason my brain is so wrinkly and ridged is, like a suitcase packed with a lot   
   of junk, it contains too many neurons to fit smoothly inside my skull.   
   Of late I've been a bit worried about my aging brain.   
   When I ask it a simple question such as, "What is the word for that thing   
   that's sort of a harmonica but more annoying and looks like you could smoke   
   pot with it?" or when I look for my glasses while wearing my glasses, I think,   
   "My, my, it's going to be    
   a very smooth transition to dementia."   
   How is it that certain minds seem able to forestall senescence, while others   
   succumb?   
   You may have read in some magazine whose name I can't recall that we can   
   affect the resilience of our brains by investing in them early on, banking   
   mental health as if in a 401(k) -- to borrow an analogy from psychologist   
   Sherrie All.   
   This notion hinges on the widely accepted theories of brain reserve and   
   cognitive reserve.   
   Kenneth Kosik, a neurologist and neuroscience professor at the University of   
   California, Santa Barbara, explained these two kindred concepts to me during a   
   rapid discourse he called "The History of Alzheimer's in Thirty Seconds,"   
   which lasted about half    
   an hour. Here's the short version:   
   In 1988, autopsies of several elderly people revealed the plaques and tangles   
   associated with Alzheimer's disease. However, these individuals had displayed   
   no signs of dementia during their lifetimes.   
   It has been hypothesized that they'd been buffered from the disease's effects   
   by the extra neuronal capacity they had been born with (brain reserve) or   
   accrued through years of intellectual and physical pursuits (cognitive   
   reserve).   
   Similarly, a study that analyzed the essays written by 678 elderly religious   
   sisters when they were in their 20s found those who had used the most   
   linguistically complex sentences were the least likely to have Alzheimer's.   
   The damage to the brain caused by Alzheimer's can be compared with traffic   
   jams caused by tractor-trailer accidents. Someone who has a robust neural   
   network can find ways around these obstructions using back roads.   
   However, that does not work forever. Unless you have the good luck to kick the   
   bucket before your roadways become disastrously clogged, sooner or later even   
   you, with your clever compensatory strategies, will have difficulty getting   
   from here to there.   
   Paradoxically, those with higher IQs, more education or higher occupation   
   achievement deteriorate faster than average once they show symptoms of   
   Alzheimer's disease.   
   To wit, if I may use that phrase, researchers found that every year of   
   education postpones the memory failure associated with dementia by 2 1/2   
   months, but once the pathology becomes apparent, the rate of diminishment is 4   
   percent faster.   
   Back to my old noggin.   
   What would it take to -- poof -- transform it into a spiffy young noggin? For   
   four months, I crammed my days and nights with as many brain-boosting pursuits   
   as I could stand.   
   For example, I learned Cherokee, zapped electricity into my brain, meditated,   
   did online brain exercises and, for one day, gave up Diet Coke. Before and   
   after my get smart program, I had my brain imaged and my IQ taken. Did I get   
   less stupid?   
   I can't reveal that secret. Actually I can. It's on page 182 of my new book,   
   "Let's Be Less Stupid: An Attempt to Maintain My Mental Faculties."   
    Take the quiz on this page, which is a list of self-improvement endeavors   
   that purportedly vitalize your mind. I culled them from various books and   
   websites. Some I invented.   
   Work your brain to figure out which ones are bona fide.   
   Tribune News Service   
      
      
   http://www.leadertelegram.com/Features/Lifestyles/2015/07/26/Brain-game.html   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)