The human brain is incredibly active. It's constantly monitoring, adjusting and repairing the physical body to facilitate optimum performance. This massive activity gives rise to the mind that according to research produces over 60.000 thoughts every day. It is constantly busy associating, sensing, perceiving, retrieving and storing data to keep you on top of your game in a competitive and challenging world.
One of the reasons it's so difficult for many people to focus and concentrate for long periods is this constant mental activity.
It can be very difficult to focus and concentrate when thoughts and emotions are always interfering with our attention. But this is the normal way by which the brain and mind work.
Researchers have been telling us for years that the brain is a lot like a muscle. It behaves like a regular muscle when you exercise it. Specific mental exercises improve mental performance in specific areas of the brain.
It may seem strange to think of the brain as a muscle, especially when its main purpose is to store memories and enable thinking. But when you start exercising it rigorously you'll discover just that. You'll be able to do more with your mind than you ever thought possible, just as you would be physically stronger after regular physical exercise.
According to Craig Ramey of the University of Alabama the brain and education are almost synonymous. When learning new skills we rehearse again and again until we master it. If we don't practice new skills, they fade a way. The phrase "if you don't use it you lose it" is as true for mental skills as it is for muscles.
Brain plasticity is the brain's natural lifelong capacity for physical and functional change. Basically it is the mechanism that allows the brain to be molded or changed by learning and experience. Research has revealed that this ability to re-generate and re-structure brain cells is active throughout our life.
Mental exercise, scientists are finding, causes physical changes in the brain, strengthening connections between brain cells called synapses and actually building new connections. Such physical changes can occur within seconds, as when we shift attention, or they may take hours or days, as some memories are cast into the biological ingots that last a lifetime.
Research indicates that certain exercises can build up specific brain areas, and some scientists are setting up programs to use this new knowledge to help learning-disabled children.
The mental patterns that get the most attention get stronger and more persistent. As you get older they become more ingrained, habitual and fixed, and you become more and more of the same.
In order to keep your memory sharp, it has been thought that you have to grow new dendrites. Decades ago, it was discovered that we can grow new dendrites, the microscopic tentacles that reach out from each neuron to make connections with other neurons. If you repeat something you have learned, your neural pathways will become more and more efficient in that part of the brain. Work hard on solving logical problems, math and language to power up your left-brain. Work on abstract, spatial or emotional problems to make your right brain more powerful. And last but not least work on improving concentration, solving future related problems, multitasking and meta-cognitive tasks to develop your brains master muscle, the frontal lobes.
To exercise your body you go to the gym where you have specially made equipment to exercise and train specific muscles. The same goes for your brain. To exercise your brain you use "mental weights" to exercise and train the specific mental muscles you want to develop and make stronger.
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