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#BRAINGAMES EPISODE GUIDE

BRAIN GAMES MEET THE BRAIN

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By Patrick J. Kiger

NOGGIN BOOSTERS

3 Tips to Boost Your Brain's Connectivity and Elasticity

In this episode of Brain Games, we learn that, like the historic city of London,
our brain is a mix of older parts that perform important basic functions, such
as regulating breathing and creating a startle response to protect you from
danger, to newer parts that handle complex duties, such as processing

sensory information and understanding human language. The various parts

of your brain work together because of connectivitythat is, their ability to
communicate with one another and pool their efforts to perform challenging
tasks. Another key attribute is plasticity, the ability of your brain to rewire
itself to perform new tasks or change the way that it does something. Some
experts say it's possible to boost both connectivity and plasticity and get
more out of your brain. Here are some tips.

Break a sweat: A 2014 Australian study, reported in Medical News Daily,

found that a 30-minute session of vigorous exercise improved brain

plasticity, and lead to improvement in both memory and motor skill
coordination. Another study by researchers at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign found that exercise also boosted the thickness and
density of white matter, the material that connects different regions in
the brain. That, in turn, might give you a greater memory capacity,
attention span, and more cognitive efficiency.
Take up music: In a study presented at the Neuroscience 2013

conference in San Diego, Harvard University neuroscientist Dr. Gottfried

Schlaug and colleagues reported that practicing a musical instrument
strengthened communication between brain areas, as well as increased
the volume of the musician's brain.
Reduce your stress level: Not all connectivity, as it turns out, is good. As
reported inPsychology Today, University of California, Berkeley
neuroscientists have found that chronic stress triggers long-term changes
that can cause your brain to decline. Part of this is actually a bad sort of
connectivity, because the stress hormone cortisol helps to hardwire
pathways between the hippocampus and the amygdala that enable you
to stay in a chronically stressed-out state of flight-or-flight. At the same
time, stress also interferes with the ability of the prefrontal cortex to form
connections that would improve learning and memory, while hard-wiring
it to be predisposed to anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress
disorder. So do your brain a favor by learning some relaxation techniques
such as meditation and breathing exercises, which are proven tools for
managing stress.

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