Anti-Aging Tips for Your Brain Part 1

Following Wendy’s trip to the Women on Fire Conference this year she has brought back some rather wonderful tips on anti-aging for your brain! Yes please I hear you all cry.  Who doesn’t want to have and maintain better brain function?!?…

 There are 3 things important for optimal brain function;

1. Cognitive processing or your IQ, your intelligence quotient.
2. Emotional flexibility or EQ. This refers to how able you are to understand other people, what motivates them and how to work co-operatively with them. These skills help us better understand, empathise and negotiate with people. There are 5 areas of emotional intelligence; self awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills. To read more click here (https://psychcentral.com/lib/what-is-emotional-intelligence-eq/)
3. Motor co-ordination or MQ. This is defined as the harmonious functioning of body parts that involve movement, including gross motor movement, fine motor movement, and motor planning.

Anatomy of the Brain Relative to Ageing

Your brain has got several regions in it that do different things. Most notable regarding ageing are your neocortex, limbic system and brainstem.

How Can You Help Your Brain?

Each are of the brain above is stimulated by different things. In order to give your brain a “work out” you should do the following things.

The Stroop Effect

Joh Ridley Stroop was a Psychologist who was able to show that our knowledge about our environment affects how we interact and behave in it.  His Stroop Test is one of the best psychological tests out there famed for being simple and elegant!

For most of us, it takes longer to state the colours of the words rather than to read the text they are printed in, despite both lists showing words in the wrong colour. It appears we are more influenced by the physical text than the text colour.

This test is a great way to work your reticular activating system (brain stem) and for all those  of you with a competitive streak, get your stop watch out!

The Stroop Test

First, time yourself reading the following text, ignoring the colour the words are printed in.

Second, time yourself while you state the colour of the words ignoring the actual text itself. Sounds simple doesn’t it! Go on give it a go and keep practicing. You will be helping your brain as it ages more than you know!

Now, keep practicing and get that brain sharp. Stay tuned for more anti-ageing hacks for your brain!

originally posted 16th August 2018