Protective Against Cognitive Decline

Watching the struggles of anyone withcognitive decline is agonizing and such decline has reached epidemicproportions in this country and others. So in addition to exercise, diet,sleep, and social connection, are there other things we can do to support ourbrain?  In the following article you’lllearn of yet another option to protect and nurture our irreplaceable brain.

Everything you do—walking to your yogaclass, making your favorite recipe, talking to your bestie, and just gettingthrough the workday—happens thanks to your brain. Your brain is the control center foryour entire body—it’s how you get stuff done. So how can you take care of sucha beautifully complex and integral part of your body and keep it in great shapefor as long as possible?

Lara V. Marcuse, MD, a board-certified neurologist andcodirector of the Mount Sinai Epilepsy Program at the Icahn School of Medicineat Mount Sinai, shares the one thing she does every day (or almost every day)to keep her brain healthy. As a bonus? It’s fun.

Pick up a difficult new skill, even ifyou stink at it.

“I started playing piano in mymid-40s,” Dr. Marcuse tells SELF. It all started by chance when her son begantaking lessons: “I took his lesson book on the sly one night before bed, and Iwas totally enthralled by it,” she says, though she admits she found the songsthemselves hard to get into at first. “I’m a 1980s New York City club kid. Igrew up on a steady diet of house music, and I never liked classical.” It’sbeen seven years since she first gave playing a Chopin piece a shot, and shehasn’t looked back since. “[Playing piano] helps me get into [the] nooks andcrannies of myself—and into my spirit,” she says.

Taking up a hobby that’s unfamiliarand even difficult forces your brain to exercise new or rarely used neuralpathways, and that can help prevent cognitive decline and even protect yourbrain against Alzheimer’s disease, a type of dementia that leads tomemory loss and an inability to complete daily tasks. Keeping your brain activemakes neural pathways strong—and the opposite is true if you’re not findingways to engage your mind.

Playing an instrument, in particular,engages every facet of your brain. If you’ve ever looked at a sheet of music,it’s basically like reading a different language. Your brain goes through abunch of hoops to figure it out. (Anecdotally speaking, as a former celloplayer, I can attest to the fact that reading music is no joke; I recallspending hours trying to understand a simple string of notes.)When you sit down to play the keys or strum a guitar, your brain is hard atwork trying to tell your hands what to do.

Musical activities trigger theauditory cortex (a.k.a. the part of your brain that helps you hear) and areasof your brain that are involved in memory function. According to a 2021 reviewpublished in Frontiers in Neuroscience, performing music is rewarding and makes you want tocontinue your musical training practice. It also improves brain plasticity,which refers to ways your brain changes in response to external or internalfactors, like a stroke or another traumatic braininjury, and how the brain adapts afterward. Learning how to play might resultin structural and functional changes in your brain over time, exactly becauseit takes a while to learn.

Your brain-bolstering activity ofchoice doesn’t have to be music-based, Dr. Marcuse says, as long as you’reinterested in whatever you’re doing enough to want to commit to it. You canpaint, try tai chi, or learn how to interpret tarot cards.

The other key piece of this is makingsure that your new hobby involves some amount of challenge. “It has to besomething a little new that’s a little hard,” Dr. Marcuse says. Passivelywatching the latest episode of The Bachelor won’t cut it,because you need your brain to be active, take in new information, digest it,and then put it back out there.

While you might feel that learning anew skill feels daunting, that’s the point! According to Dr. Marcuse, you don’t have to be good at the activity to protect yourbrain: “I never took music lessons as a kid. I’m not really good at it. I neverwill be,” she says.

And despite not being the next Mozart,she says that playing the piano adds some color and levity to her days, inaddition to protecting her brain. “I really need that in my life—I have a verystressful job,” she says. “It makes me feel that the world is sort of full ofbeauty and hope.”

How to make a new skill a regular partof your life—and why it’s great for your brain

You don’t have to do the activityevery single day, or even for a very long time. “Just try to do it frequently,and don’t do it for very long,” Dr. Marcuse says. Sometimes all she has timefor is a few bars or a couple of scales—do whatever works for you, as long asyou stay somewhat in the swing of a routine.

A 2020 research study found that increasing thefrequency with which you engage in your hobby (like doing crossword puzzles,playing board games—or an instrument—or reading the newspaper) decreasescognitive impairment and depressive symptoms in older populations. In otherwords, doing your hobby more often will be better for youroverall well-being. Practice not only increases the speed at which you canperform a task, but it also improves your accuracy. Research theorizes thatwhen you attempt an activity for the first time, specific brain regions areactivated to help you complete the task; this creates new neural pathways asyour brain stores all this new information in your memory as you continuepracticing your skill over time. 

Consistently training your brain willhelp boost your cognitive processes over time, because the myelin sheath—thelayer of protein that coats your nerves—thickens. A plumper myelin sheath helpsyour brain transmit and process information more efficiently. (An added bonusof practicing: Even though the word routine sounds dull as allget-out, maintaining one can reduce your stress levels and make you happier ingeneral.)

Whether you decide to take a cookingclass or learn Spanish, try a new hobby that really speaks to you.“Everything you do to protect your brain is going to make your life better,”Dr. Marcuse says. Bearing that in mind: I think it’s time to pull out the ol’cello that’s been collecting dust in my closet. 

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