Whether you’re trying to recall the name of the TV show your friend recommended or the spot you last saw your keys—you could swear you dropped them on the table by the door!—memory is one of the mysterious brain functions we worry most about as we age. It affects everything from our sense of ourselves to how we manage our daily lives.
“People want to remember their grocery list,” says Gary Small, M.D., director of Behavioral Health Breakthrough Therapies at Hackensack Meridian Health, professor of psychiatry and behavioral health at the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine, and author of 2 Weeks to a Younger Brain. “When they’re walking down the street and see someone they know, they want to remember that person’s name so they don’t have to say, ‘Hi, um, how are you?’ and can say, ‘Hi, Mary, how are you doing?’ ”
But memory is much more complicated than simply plucking a word or name from the Rolodex in your brain. Recalling a friend’s name, for example, is also tied to your brain’s processing speed, your ability to focus, and a host of other factors you can improve. And like most skills in life—and most muscles in your body—you can keep it strong by putting in some work.
It’s important to remember that memory can be slippery and occasionally goes on the fritz, no matter what stage of life you’re in. “People over 40 forget that they forgot things when they were in their 20s, too,” points out Sherrie D. All, Ph.D., owner and director of the Chicago Center for Cognitive Wellness and author of The Neuroscience of Memory.
Despite what you may have heard, your brain doesn’t stop growing as soon as you graduate and join the working world. Thanks to neuroplasticity, your brain has the ability to modify its structure and function throughout your life; you can even produce new brain cells well after retirement. In other words, if you want to make your brain stronger, you absolutely can.
“With brain training, you can improve your concentration, expand your working memory, and much more,” says Dr. All.
The Basics of Brain Training
After someone has a stroke or other type of brain injury, they can rehab their cognitive skills with two types of brain-training strategies: compensatory and restorative. These can work for anyone who is just aiming to flex their cognitive muscles, as well.
Compensatory strategies make up the bulk of what you can do for your brain, and they work sort of the way a crutch helps you walk if you have a broken leg. These are things like always putting your car keys on a hook by the door, coming up with a catchy song to remind you of an address, or, when meeting a new person, repeating their name to solidify the memory.
Restorative strategies, however, are designed to help you actually repair or improve brain function. For example, someone recovering from a stroke may have to relearn to walk or speak.
“And then there are other brain health behaviors you can adopt—like getting enough sleep and eating well—to focus your memory, improve your recall and comprehension, and more,” says Dr. All.
Now, you can’t expect to become a whiz kid overnight, but you can make significant improvements. “What’s realistic depends on what people are willing to do,” says Dr. Small. Just as with going to the gym to get stronger, you’ll get out of it what you put into it.
Now we should note that researchers are still unraveling the mysteries of the brain, and no strategy is a surefire golden ticket to pushing back cognitive decline, but the following strategies have been shown to improve the way people process, focus on, store, and recall information. And we promise, these are all things you can fit into your daily life!
1. Commit to Exercise
Ask any brain expert, and they will say the single most effective way to work your brain is to work your body. “We have really strong evidence that exercise can help you grow more brain cells, increase the number of connections and pathways in your brain, and create more nerve growth factors—which are like Miracle-Gro for your brain cells,” says Dr. All.
Studies have looked at the brain-building benefits of everything from hopping on a bike to getting into bird pose.
One study showed that regular yoga practice led to increased volume in the hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in memory, and a larger prefrontal cortex—both of which can help you sidestep age-related neuro decline.
Another small study showed that high-intensity interval training in adults 60 and older resulted in an increase of up to 30% in memory performance. The research, published in Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism, focused on high-interference memory, which helps you do things like distinguish one car from another that’s the same make and model.
If you prefer your workouts to involve music and a lot of fun, research shows that dancing is an extremely effective way to exercise the brain as well, as it challenges the brain through choreography.
Bottom line: Pick a fitness path you enjoy—and stay on it.
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2. Learn New Things
No, this doesn’t mean you need to learn to play the piano or speak Korean (though those are certainly worthwhile challenges!). These things would definitely sharpen your brain, but they are also extremely difficult, and if you get frustrated and give up, what’s the point?
Instead, think of new activities that you’ll really enjoy and come back to day after day. “The idea is to train your brain, not strain your brain,” says Dr. Small. “Each of us needs to find that entry point so the new activities we choose are engaging and we’re motivated to do better at them.”
That might mean stepping up your morning puzzle routine by mixing in sudokus, logic puzzles, and cryptics with your crosswords. If you like painting, try a freehand drawing class. Ease yourself into something new by building on something you enjoy. Increasing the challenge level helps your brain create new pathways instead of repeatedly activating the old ones.
“If you’re committed to working on any kind of mental task, you’ll get better and faster at it over time,” says Dr. Small. “We all have the capacity to improve. It’s a matter of practice,” he says.
3. Do Mindful Meditation
You’ll never remember the name of the person you just met or the five things your partner asked you to pick up at the supermarket if you can’t focus. A few minutes of mindfulness practice each day can help.
Research has shown that even brief bouts of mindfulness meditation can have instant benefits. In one small study, novices to the practice spent 10 minutes listening to an audio-guided mindfulness meditation and saw an immediate increase in their attention, accuracy, and reaction times in a task performed afterward, compared with a control group. Another recent review found that older adults who had meditated regularly for decades had younger brain ages than those who didn’t.
“Attention is definitely the most malleable of all the cognitive domains, from what we’ve been able to see or prove,” says Dr. All. “Meditation is a good strategy for strengthening your brain—even if you’re just focusing on your breath during those minutes. When people meditate, over the course of weeks, their hippocampus grows, their prefrontal cortex increases in volume, and their fear detector—the amygdala—likely shrinks.”
That last part is key, because you can’t focus when you’re in a state of panic or stress. “Cortisol is toxic to brain cells,” says Dr. All. “You can’t get rid of all your stress, but you can let meditation help you get out of fight-or-flight mode.”
4. Get More Social
Taking regular walks with a neighbor, joining a pub trivia team, or scheduling a weekly Zoom with a friend who moved across the country can be a balm for your brain. “The data is quite convincing that isolation can impact not only how long you live but also how well you live,” says Adam Gazzaley, M.D., Ph.D., the founder and executive director of Neuroscape, a neuroscience center at the University of California at San Francisco that’s focused on the intersection of technology and brain health.
It’s not just that isolation brings greater risk of cognitive decline; socializing is very good for your brain because it’s another way to learn new things. “When you’re having conversations with other people, you’re working your brain,” says Dr. Small. Just 10 minutes of conversation (not debate) can increase executive-functioning skills like working memory and the ability to suppress distractions, says an older study in Social Psychological and Personality Science.
5. Play Some Games
Brain-training games are a multibillion-dollar industry that skyrocketed during pandemic needs for e-learning. If you’ve ever wondered whether the apps you see advertised on your Facebook feed are worth it, know that the answer is a solid…maybe.
The first thing to know is that not all brain games are created equal. “There are good games and bad games,” says Dr. Gazzaley, whose lab has been developing and testing video game technology to enhance brain health for over a decade. “The devil is in the details.”
Also, different games have different brain-gain goals. Some are slow and strategic with the aim of enhancing your thinking skills, while others are action-packed with the aim of speeding up your processing. “The challenge is that a lot of the data is mixed right now,” says Dr. Gazzaley, who is working to understand how the enhanced attention abilities achieved in a game can affect day-to-day life.
As it stands now, there isn’t a ton of definitive research on the benefits of commercially available brain games. But they’re fun, and it’s possible that they will help, so if you’re interested, there’s no harm in trying.
It may seem overwhelming to adopt all these new behaviors, but one key to bringing ease to the process: Look at it less as a chore than as pure fun. Whether it’s going for a bike ride or finding 10 minutes to meditate and de-stress, let the brain-boosting elements of all these habits be the icing on your cerebral cake.
This article originally appeared in the April 2021 issue of Prevention.
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