Excerpt
from Train Your Brain More: 60 Days to an Even Better Brain
by Dr. Ryuta Kawashima
Introduction
Why should you train your brain?
This book is a
follow-up to Train Your Brain: 60 Days to a Better Brain. I've
received lots of letters from readers since the first book came out,
and I'm delighted to know that people all over the world are now
making these drills a regular part of their daily routine. To keep
things fresh, we have made one change to the format of the exercises.
We have included some simple division problems for you to solve as
you work through your daily brain-training exercises. Brain function
naturally begins to deteriorate after our twenties, just like our
physical and muscular strength gradually weaken as we age. However,
just as you can maintain your physical strength if you exercise
regularly, you can keep your brain power from deteriorating by
providing daily stimulation for your brain.
In my
neuroscience lab, I developed the exercises in this book in order to
activate the largest regions of the brain. These brain health
exercises increase the delivery of oxygen, blood, and various amino
acids to the prefrontal cortex. The result is more neurons and neural
connections, which are characteristics of a healthy brain.
Who
is this book for?
Adults with the following symptoms:
* Increasing forgetfulness
* Difficulty remembering people's names, spelling words, or expressing thoughts.Adults who wish to work on the following:
* Creativity
* Memory skills
* Communication skills
* Slowing the mental effects of aging
How can you keep your brain healthy?
In order to
maintain your physical health, you have to (1) exercise regularly,
(2) eat healthily and (3) sleep well. In like manner, in order to
keep your brain healthy, you need to (1) exercise your brain
regularly, (2) eat healthily and (3) sleep well. As an adult, you are
responsible for your own diet and sleep on a daily basis. This book
is exclusively designed to help you get used to also training your
brain everyday.
Simple calculations really work!
While
browsing through this workbook, you may have noticed it consists only
of simple calculations. Some of you may be wondering why an adult,
who is intellectually active at work and at home, would need to do
such elementary school-level math. Through my research I found that
simple calculations activate the brain more effectively than any
other activity. I also discovered that the best way to activate the
largest regions of the brain was to solve these calculations quickly.
That is why I have created the easy-to-solve problems you see in this
workbook to help you Train Your Brain!
Calculation and
oral reading exercises are the optimal training methods according to
the latest brain research
My latest research proved that
reading aloud, solving simple calculations, and writing activate the
brain most effectively.
Brain training boosted the ability
to remember by twenty percent
My research team carried
out research with elementary school students. We counted how many
words they could memorize within two minutes and found that, on
average, they could memorize 8.3 words (the equivalent figure for
adults is 12.2). When we conducted the same test after a two minute
calculation exercise, the average word count remember increased to
9.8 and after two minutes of reading out loud the average increased
to 10.1. Our results show that these exercises boosted the children's
ability to remember by more than twenty percent.
The
calculation and reading aloud exercises acted as a warm-up for the
students, allowing them to perform better on the word memorization
tests.
Simple calculation and oral reading exercises
alleviated symptoms of dementia
My team also conducted an
experiment with twelve dementia Alzheimer type patients. We gave our
patients a ten minutes-a-day writing and oral reading exercise and a
ten-minutes-a-day calculation exercise to be performed two to five
days a week. Cognitive and prefrontal cortex function of
non-participant subjects that did not do the calculation and oral
reading exercises deteriorated during the six-month follow up.
However, with participant subjects that did do the exercises, we
succeeded in preventing deterioration of their cognitive function, as
well as improving their prefrontal cortex function.
This is
an exceptional achievement on a global scale -- rarely has the
deterioration of the cognitive function of dementia Alzheimer type
patients been slowed or diminished.
The above is an
excerpt from the book Train
Your Brain More:
60 Days to a Better Brain: Better Brainpower, Better Memory, Better
Creativity by Dr.
Ryuta Kawashima. The above excerpt is a digitally scanned
reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been
proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process.
Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.
Copyright
© 2009 Dr.
Ryuta Kawashima author of Train
Your Brain More:
60 Days to a Better Brain: Better Brainpower, Better Memory, Better
Creativity