Flex your muscle
Just like your body, your brain needs exercise, too. Brain exercises, or “neurobics,” help stimulate neural connections and prevent atrophy. Flexing your mind helps improve short-term and long-term memory. Try these neurobic exercises developed by Lawrence Katz, Ph.D., at Duke University. These three exercises activate unused neural pathways in your brain, helping your mind stay fit.
Limit your senses
Get dressed with your eyes closed.
When you blunt the senses you’d normally use to perform such tasks, you reactivate long-dormant associations between the areas of your brain that process touch, hold mental pictures of objects and store the names of those objects.
Break routines
Head to work on a new route.
Suddenly your brain is confronted with an engaging task that’s interesting, challenging and fun—not typical of your regular daily commute.
Engage your attention
Write with your non-dominant hand.
This activates rarely-used networks of connections on the opposite side of your brain.