Brain Tips

Have you been searching for just the right brain tips, the ones that get you a raise, or fame and fortune?

A magic potion or a magic wand, or like the super villins of cartoon land, the machine which makes your skull twice as large?

Unfortunately, I have not discovered any brain tips like that either, but I have learned that the brain can be worked with, exercised, even trained, fed, and rested, to be the brain which provides the maximum level of neurons firing in tight synchrony, the kind of brain which grows new neurons, and new synapsess and dendrites because that brain receives novel challenge regularly. That is a brain tip that I can use.

The key brain tips involve awareness of recent discoveries about our brains which indicate that our brain grows new neurons (neurogenesis). Those neurons can become part of already existing circuits if we can challenge them with novel learning experiences within a certain window of opportunity.

According to what I am reading now, if the neurons are not challenged within that window, they are pruned, because the brain is an energy efficient organ, and keeps the operating system already in place nourished.

The good news is we can provide the challenge for those new neurons with novel learning experiences. Novel is the very important word.

What novel learning involves is learning a new skill, not more of the same skill. In other words, as a counselor, I cannot read another counseling text, and expect to cement those new neurons into an existing circuit. I need to learn how to play chess, play an instrument, or study a foreign language, or I need to use one of the new computer based brain fitness programs to exercise my existing circuits.

That is the kind of novel challenge which is key to neurogenesis.

Here is another brain tip. Our brains are incredibly plastic, and just love to adopt themselves to new activities.

In fact, the brain is a data seeking organ, and wants to perceive and learn, constantly.

It will respond to learning new skills by growing new dendrites on existing neurons and new synapses on existing dendrites, forming many new connections, which are the key to your super brain. The more neurons involved in a perception process, the more likely it is that our perceptions will be accurate, and the decisions we make in regard to those perceptions will most likely be effective in our lives.

So providing my brain what it needs in regards to neurogenesis and neuroplasticity are the two most important brain tips for today.