How to Train Your Brain and Prevent Yourself from Degradation at Any Age?

How to prevent the brain from degenerating? This question bothers most of the world’s thinking population. Today I will tell you about neuroplasticity and how to develop it at home! Let’s go!

What is Bain Degradation and Neuroplasticity?

Brain degeneration is the loss of specific skills and the inability of the brain to adapt to changes. To support adaptation, neuroplasticity is essential. Neuroplasticity is the brain’s lifelong ability to change its structure, function, or neural connections in response to internal or external stimuli and experiences.

How Does the Brain Change Under the Influence of New Experiences?

According to some studies, an essential function of neuroplasticity is to allow neurons to compensate for trauma and disease, meaning that they redistribute function, form new connections, and regenerate. They also adjust their activity according to new situations or changes in the environment. Encouragingly, recent studies show that restoration of lost functions and connections and forming new ones is possible in various brain cells. The good news also includes scientific evidence of possible neurogenesis in adults. Neurogenesis is a multistep process of forming new nerve cells in the adult nervous system. The issue is still controversial, and scientists have not reached a consensus, but there is evidence of active neurogenesis in the amygdala, prefrontal cortex, hippocampus, and cerebellum. These four parts of our brain are responsible for most of our memory. Currently, there is active research on neuroplasticity’s role in treating mental illness. For instance, cognitive behavioral psychotherapy has several tools to rearrange neural connections to deal with anxiety, stress, or depression. In addition to psychotherapy, pharmacological drugs and electrical brain stimulation can rebuild neural connections.

How to Train the Brain and Maintain Neuroplasticity?

If you always solve problems in the same way, you might not be ready to solve any new ones – you will either apply your old knowledge or open a lock with the key you already have rather than with the right one. At the same time, life brings us all new challenges – it is essential to maintain the brain’s neuroplasticity for successful adaptation. Most of you probably play sports, and research shows that maintaining neuroplasticity is also a sport, but for the brain.

Take Care of Your Health and Exercise

To form new neural connections and prevent degradation, your body and brain must be in a resourceful

state. It’s hard to develop, do new activities, and turn on awareness if your physiological state is weak. As cliché as it sounds, it is still essential to eat healthy food, get enough sleep – 7-9 hours according to the National Sleep Foundation, especially after age 40, drink enough water, and get enough oxygen – to ventilate the room and walk outdoors. All of these are necessary components for good brain function. In addition, recent studies show that 20 to 25 minutes of physical activity daily is beneficial for neuroplasticity as it normalizes cortisol hormone level.

Don’t be Afraid of Challenging Tasks

To train your brain’s neuroplasticity, you should set new and challenging goals – for example, try to combine the usual tasks that you do on auto-pilot and the ones that require you to find new ways of solving problems.

Diversify the Usual Routine

The easiest and most affordable advice is to find new routes to get home and to work, find new favorite places in town. I made it a rule years ago to try fresh foods regularly in restaurants and at home.

Listen to New Music

We often listen to familiar tracks simply because we can experience the same emotions with them. The mechanism of familiar neural connections also works here – favorite songs become an excellent way to enter a resourceful energy state. It’s a great mechanism but worth seeking balance and reflecting on new musical compositions.

Seek Out New Friends and Acquaintances

Of course, having friends who are easy to get along with is wonderful. It’s essential to be able to relax in the company of loved ones in a familiar way. However, striking a balance in building close relationships is vital. The social tools embedded in us significantly affect the way we think. Sometimes it happens that we, under the influence of certain people, change our point of view, a set of interests, see what was unavailable to us, and get a lot of new impressions.

Meditate

Meditation is an excellent and already scientifically proven method of preventing brain degradation. Many studies have been conducted recently to examine the relationship between neuroplasticity and meditation. The results show that practicing mindful breathing and meditation causes fundamental physical changes in the brain – increasing gray matter volume. Other studies have compared data on gray matter volume in the brains of people who meditate and a control group of participants who have never done it. Generally, gray matter decreases as people age, but scientists have found that meditators keep their gray matter at the same level.

Give Up the Habit of Criticizing Everything

You might be surprised to learn that an essential step in preventing brain degradation is to break the habit of criticizing everything! So often, criticizing the world and people around you is a resistance to change. Instead, try to accept these changes and their annoyances, thereby motivating your brain to adapt to the new reality. The same applies to the labels we hang on people. Tracking your reactions and dissatisfaction with changes in familiar scenarios signals a “hardening” of your brain.

Don’t Just Watch Series, but also Read Books

Research shows that reading reduces stress levels by 68%, which is more effective than listening to music (61%), drinking tea (54%), and walking (42%). However, the study participants only took 6 minutes to reduce their stress levels. Meanwhile, reading is more challenging neurophysiologically than speaking or processing images. Parts of the brain that have evolved for other functions, such as vision, language, and associative learning, are thought to connect to a specific neural circuit for reading. As you read new books, you form new neural connections and create new constructs and patterns of behavior. Even when you read these words, your brain decodes a series of abstract symbols and synthesizes the results into complex ideas. And the next moment, you can already see the world a little differently.

Conclusion

So, our task is to form new neural connections all the time. This work requires a particular focus of attention and work on ourselves, while the brain wants to take the easy way out. Imagine concrete that will harden quickly if you don’t stir it – the same with the brain. Experts advise using various techniques to activate neuroplasticity. Reading, playing musical instruments, traveling, and crafts involving fine motor skills positively affect the formation of new neural connections. Choose activities that give you pleasure, and after a week of “training,” you can notice changes in perception, mood, and thinking speed. But again, familiar scenarios give us a sense of stability and reduce anxiety, so try to find and maintain a balance between the standard and the new in your life.