Brain Rules for Ageing Well: 10 principles for staying vital, happy, and sharp

by John Medina

why you should go dancing with them as often as possible.

reading a book several hours a day can actually add years to your life.

And that regularly engaging in friendly arguments with people who disagree with you is like taking a daily brain vitamin.

Your ability to notice the glass is half-full actually increases the older you get, and stress levels decline.

that many factors contribute to keeping your massive memory streams flowing strong.

The more stress you encounter, the bigger the load (and the greater the damage). Consider stress metaphorically: the stresses in life are oceanic waves, and your body is a cliff. The more waves that crash onto the cliff, the greater the erosion, and the more severe the total effect. Allostatic load is the measure of your body’s deterioration, in response to the lifelong waves of stress you experience.

but the net quality of the individual interactions.

actively seeking to understand a different perspective.

The more intergenerational relationships older people form, the higher the brain benefit turns out to be, especially when seniors interact with elementary-age children.

It reduces stress, decreases rates of affective disorders such as anxiety and depression, and even lowers mortality rates.

That means regular exposure to virtually anyone of a different generation increases the diversity of opinions you’re likely to experience.

“A perceived lack of control over the quantity and especially the quality of one’s social activity.”

This means communities are constantly being formed, uprooted, and re-formed—not a condition conducive to creating rich, long-lasting adult friendships.

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been. —Mark Twain

One reason older people report being happier is that they’re increasingly selective about what they pay attention to—and what they remember when they do pay attention.

To be happy, you must regularly experience positive emotions. Generate a list of the things that bring you true pleasure, then marinate yourself in them, allowing the items on the list to become a regular part of your life.

Consistently engage in activities so meaningful you actually stop checking your cell phone when you do them. Losing yourself in a hobby can be like that. So can good movies, books, sports—even a dance class.

As long as the relationships are positive, insert the entirety of the chapter on friendship into this recommendation.

Identify and pursue a purpose that gives your life meaning. For most people, that requires solidly connecting their actions to a purpose

Set specific goals for yourself, especially if that requires you to achieve mastery in something over which you currently have no mastery at all. This could be physical, like training for a marathon, or intellectual, like learning to speak French.

“Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way; on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally.”

No question our busy lives don’t take naturally to mindfulness. But if we stick with it, really good things will happen to our brains. These good things fall into two categories: emotional regulation (especially the ability to manage stress) and cognition (especially the ability to pay attention).

The regions are turned up to a higher level in mindful people compared with untrained controls—and stay that way, even when the mindful folks are in a resting state.

That means the changes you make in your lifestyle should never go away, either.

you don’t create a robust social schedule for the rest of your life or practise mindfulness meditation for the rest of your life. There are equally great reasons to be exhilarated if you do.

This type of memory is called procedural memory. One of the distinguishing differences between procedural memory and declarative memory is conscious awareness.

Semantic memory, a memory for facts, doesn’t erode with age. Access to its supporting memorised database—your vocabulary—actually increases with the passing years.

Working memory deficits can show up in the most embarrassing ways. You begin to lose your keys more often. You forget what you were about to say, or do, or you lose track of what somebody else says or does. You mention something to a friend, only to have them stop you and say you’d told them before. We’ve all had these experiences.The decline can be dramatic.

Yes, I am putting on my stern professorial hat, thrusting my finger into the air, and demanding that your brain take up the habit of lifelong learning. Enroll in a class. Pick up a new language. Read until you can’t see anything anymore. An ageing brain is fully capable of learning new things. To keep that talent healthy, you have to plunge yourself into the deep end of learning environments every day. No exceptions.

The best exercise is to find people with whom you do not agree and regularly argue with them. Productive engagement involves experiencing environments where you find your assumptions challenged, your perspective stretched, your prejudices confronted, your curiosity inspired. Productive engagement is one of the clearest ways to keep your memory batteries from draining.

This is consistent with plenty of research demonstrating that one of the most effective ways to keep your brain sharp over a fund of knowledge is to continually teach it to others.

Every day you exercise your brain above what you do typically delays that deterioration by 0.18 years.

The brain’s memory is like a laptop with thirty separate hard drives, each in charge of a specific type of memory.

Some memory systems age better than others. Working memory (formerly short-term memory) can decline dramatically, causing forgetfulness. Episodic memory—stories of life events—also tends to decline.

Procedural memory—for motor skills—remains stable during ageing. Vocabula...

Learning a demanding skill is the most scientifically proven way to reduce age...

Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different? —Anonymous

room amnesia

The loss involves something called an event boundary. “Doorways are bad. Avoid them at all costs,”

multitasking. Scientists have a better term—divided attention—because what we’re really doing is switching between tasks.

slower processing becomes a dangerous fact of life. It’s the leading reason people quit driving when they get older.

Processing speed, the speed at which your brain takes in, processes, and reacts to outside stimuli, drops in the ageing process. It is the greatest predictor of cognitive decline. Switching tasks becomes more difficult as you age. Consequently, it is easier to become distracted as you grow older.

Lewy body dementia is the second-leading cause of dementia in the United States, accounting for between 15 per cent and 35 per cent of all dementias,

Loosely stated, executive function (EF) is the behaviour that allows you to get tasks done—and to be calm and civil while doing them. It is vital in many aspects of life, including running the free world.

Emotional regulation includes impulse control, which incorporates the ability to delay gratification.

Cognitive control is a flowing conduit of good sense. Its hallmarks include the ability to plan (creating steps in the

pursuit of some goal),

“TEENAGERS: Tired of being harassed by your stupid parents? ACT NOW!!! Move out, get a job, pay your bills … while you still know everything.”

One of the most astonishing revelations of recent geroscience is this: greater physical activity means greater intellectual vigor, regardless of age.

Especially powerful were results linking aerobic exercise to changes in executive function.