Is There A Limit To How Much You Can Improve Your Brain?

There’s a popular myth that our brains finish developing at 25 (not remotely true) and from then on, stays pretty much the same with no new growth (also not true), and in terms of cognitive performance, the only way is down (have a guess whether this is true).

If you guessed “no”, you guessed correctly!

The first two myths we’ve previous covered here: Building Your Brain At Every Age

And for more about the terribly misrepresented study that inadvertently launched the “brain finishes developing at 25” myth, see: The Brain As A Work-In-Progress

So, what about cognitive performance?

Limitless?

Researchers (Dr. Lori Cook et al.) set about this question, by means of a large (n=3,966) and exciting 3-year longitudinal study with adults of all ages (well, 19–94), using the BrainHealth Index (BHI), a first-of-its-kind multidimensional metric that measures holistic brain fitness.

They gave these participants a comprehensive set of brain-healthy practices to do, and then measured to see if there would be improvements, and if so, how much and for whom and what factors affected it.

In few words, they found:

• No ceiling on improvement: significant gains in brain health were observed across the board. Even top-tier performers continued to improve over 1,000 days, suggesting there is no known limit to brain optimization.
• Advantage for “low-starters”: participants who entered the study with the lowest baseline scores demonstrated the most significant rates of improvement, demonstrating that poor brain health is not a life sentence.
• Small habit changes; big difference: gains were directly correlated with consistency of utilization. Participants who engaged the most in 5 to 15 minutes of daily micro-training and adopted brain-healthy habits in their everyday lives achieved the highest brain health scores.
• Age was not an issue: young and old participants alike enjoyed similar brain gains!

…which is really quite groundbreaking! And as one of the researchers put it:

❝For too long, we’ve operated under the outdated notion that we need to wait until something bad happens to our brain before we do anything for it. This study reminds us that our brain is not defined by age, it is defined by possibility. Humans have already expanded how long we live. Now, we are expanding how long the brain can continue to improve, disrupting the trajectory of decline that often begins in our early 30s. Because the true promise of longer life is a brain that allows us to thrive year by year.❞

~ Dr. Sandra Chapman, whose work we featured in our article: How (And Why) To Train Your Pre-Frontal Cortex

…and who was also a co-author on the study we’ve been talking about today, which study you can read in full here: Measuring and increasing the brain health span across adulthood: a public health imperative ← you will need to click on the PDF option to read it in full, otherwise it’s just the abstract on the page

Want to learn more?

As for how to do it for yourself, consider:

• Do Try This At Home: The 12-Week Brain Fitness Program
• Synergistic Brain-Training
• The Physical Exercises That Build Your Brain
• Sharper Minder & Body In 3 Weeks With 1 Supplement
• Seven Exercises To Strengthen Your Brain
• Ways To Boost Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF)
• Reading As A Cognitive Exercise ← there are specific tips here for ensuring your reading is (and remains) cognitively beneficial

Take care!