Today on the podcast, we’re sharing the audio from a talk that Dr. Andrea Wilkinson gave at the University of Toronto, called “Exploring and Developing Tools for Staying Engaged as we Age.” The audio being shared today is specifically from the last section of the talk, where Dr. Andrea spoke about staying engaged during healthy aging. In this context, she discusses the inspiration and foundation for BrainShape.ca. This will be informative for anyone who is not very familiar with the BrainShape platform and – for anyone that is familiar with Dr. Andrea’s story – this audio will serve as a good refresher on why she’s built BrainShape and how this platform will help you build your own successful brain health journey.

About BrainShape.ca

BrainShape is a community that's being designed and developed specifically for adults who are over the age of 60 who have the desire and drive to stay mentally and physically active and engaged.

As the co-founder and CEO of BrainShape, Dr. Andrea Wilkinson’s goal is to create a platform that shares brain health research and also inspire adults who are over the age of 60 in terms of how it is that they can maintain mental and physical activity in their lives.

Four Key Pillars of Brain Health

So, there are four key pillars that support brain health: fitness, food and nutrition, socializing and mental activities or brain fitness.

Physical Fitness

Physical fitness piece is a non-negotiable when it comes to brain health, everyone should be exercising to some degree every single day. What that means for people is different depending on who you are and where your physical capacities are.

What the research shows is that humans actually grow and produce new brain cells, around 700 of them each and every single day, but physical fitness has shown to boost the number of brain cells that humans produce. It has been shown to double or even triple the amount of brain cells that we grow and they predominantly grow in the hippocampus which is the memory center of the brain.

And so, physical exercise increases neurogenesis - neurogenesis is the growth of  new brain cells.

Food and Nutrition

Nutrition and food is a core fundamental pillar of brain health, as I know everyone in the room is well aware of. One of the most interesting components of nutrition and food for me in terms of brain health is the consumption of healthy fats.

The human brain is composed of approximately 60% fat, and so the healthy fats that we eat,  we don't naturally produce fatty acids in our bodies and so we actually have to consume them with the foods that we eat. This is a balance of omega-3's and omega-6's. They come from foods like fatty fish, avocado andnuts for example. And these healthy fats really help the different brain cells in different brain regions communicate with each other. So it's really important that you get your balance of omega-3s and -6s.

Socializing

Interacting and conversing with people is a very complex brain activity. As such, socializing with others is a core pillar of successful aging and brain health. It's also enjoyable and offers opportunities to learn new things and gather new insights. When thinking about your own socializing patterns, remember that we all have different thresholds and unique personalities. Some people may be more introverted than others, so they may not want to socialize as much (and that’s ok). Focus your attention on creating opportunities for quality social engagements.

Mental Considerations

Regarding the mental health component, remember this saying: “Use it or lose it." It’s interesting to think about what are the different brain fitness activities that people need to do to create and to facilitate a healthy mind. It is interesting to note that in most newspapers or magazine articles on brain fitness they often list a set list of activities: do a crossword, seek novelty, garden, etc. While these are good ideas for keeping your brain active, what is missing is the consideration of who the reader is as an individual and what it is that they like to do. For example, my mom doesn't like to read novels. So, if she was told that she had to read more to improve her brain health, she would inherently fail at the goal of reading every day because it's not something that she inherently finds valuable and meaningful. It would be hard for her to incorporate that into her every day.

Here at BrainShape, Dr. Andrea urges people to think about what it is they like to do and then to build their brain fitness activities around those hobbies and interests.

What is Brain Plasticity?

The human brain is plastic and malleable. It changes in response to our environment and experiences. Our brains are capable of changing in response to our environments and experiences in three key ways.

1. Our brains change physically - so the size and thickness of the different layers in our brains actually can change.

2. Our brains change functionally, so how quickly and efficiently our brain works has also been shown to change.

3.  Our brains change chemically; so, the concentration of brain chemicals (called neurotransmitters) have been shown to change in response to experiences and the environment.

here is a lot of research that has supported this idea of brain plasticity and how activities that we do have an impact on how our brains function.

The Research

Published in 2014, Dr. Denise Park at the Center for Vital Longevity (in Dallas, Texas) examined cognitive plasticity and brain plasticity in older adults – in her Synapse Project. In this research, they explored the difference between productive engagement and receptive engagement.

Productive Engagement

In the productive engagement group, individuals exposed to course activities where they were required to acquire  new and novel information. They had to engage in sustained mental challenges, while they were going through the course. The course was 14-weeks long, and participants had to “engage” for about 15 hours of activity per week. Individuals in the productive engagement group completed a photography course, a quilting course, or a course that combined the two. In the photography course, they learned about using the camera and computer software. In the quilting program, they learned about the basics of quilting and also how to use a computer-based sewing machine.

Receptive Engagement

Receptive engagement involved more passive observation with familiar materials and knowledge. In this way, there was no inherent mental challenge involved in being in the receptive engagement group. The work they did relied on people's existing knowledge - there was no new knowledge that was learned. The receptive engagement group offered a “social” option, where people would cook together, go on field trips together, and play games together. It was really social and interactive; but, there was no new knowledge that was attained through the social engagement group. There was a placebo group of individuals who were asked to watch documentary videos and do crosswords. The placebo group included no social components.

Research Results

Here are the most interesting results of the Synapse Project. They looked at individual participants abilities to perform a memory task. They compared pretest memory performance (before they engaged in the 14-week program) to posttest (after they completed the program). While both groups increase their memory performance, after having completed the 14-weeks of activity, those in the productive engagement group (photography or quilting course) showed a boost in memory performance that was substantially more than those in the receptive engagement group.

The researchers also completed brain scans on a subset of participants - before they did the 14-week program and again afterwards. While participants were in the scanner, they were asked to do a task. There was an easy version of the task and a harder version of the task. Note - when you're engaging in a cognitive activity that is substantially challenging, additional brain regions are recruited to be able to compensate for the increase in demand. What they found was that the individuals that were in the productive engagement groups (photography or quilting course), recruited additional brain regions during that hard version of the task. So, the productive engagement group was better able to adapt their brain activation in response to the difficult task while their brains were being scanned. In contrast, individuals in the receptive group showed no difference in brain activation between before they did the course and after the 14 weeks.  

Research Conclusions

Individuals who engaged in sustained effort to acquire a demanding new skill showed significant improvements in memory and also showed changes in the ways their brains functioned. The researcher also looked at the brain changes one year after the study had concluded and they found that – while some of the brain changes remained intact for individuals from the productive engagement group -  many of the brain changes returned back to the pretest (baseline) levels. What this suggests is just that we have to maintain and sustain engagement in challenging activities. Challenging yourself for 14 weeks does not yield permanent changes in how your brain functions. You have to continuously act on it and exercise your brain to see those lasting changes.

Quotes

“Neuroplasticity or brain plasticity works under the same conditions as physical exercise does for the body. A single Zumba class or one run is not going to make a difference. However, the same practice done with consistency over time will gradually have noticeable and lasting effects on your body. And the same is true for practices which shape your brain.” – Debbie Hampton

You have to continuously work at it. In the same way as needing to continuously go to the gym and exercise your body, you have to continuously exercise your brain.

“Neural connections that are relatively inactive wither away. It's a kind of neural Darwinism, the busiest brain connections survive, so you use it or you lose it.” – Rick Hanson

It is those brain connections that we want to continuously exercise to help make sure that they are well-ingrained and utilized often, so that they don't wither away.

“A particular challenge from midlife and beyond is the brain's neural inclination to steer towards efficiency. It figures out the easiest way to get something done and hits repeat.” – Paula Spencer Scott

Brain Plasticity as a Metaphor

You’re standing at the top of a mountain that has been freshly snowed on. You have your skis on, and you must decide which way you're going to go down the mountain. There are obviously some limitations, because there are some trees and some rocks; but, generally you have a wide variety of options on which path you want to choose to go down this mountain. So you pick a route and you go down the mountain. Now, if you really like the path that you initially took down the mountain (it had nice sunlight and a great view) - all else being equal, you're going to keep going down the same path continuously over and over again. Eventually, you will develop a sort of groove in the snow, because it's the path you continuously take down the mountain. The deeper the groove is, the harder it will be to get out of that groove, when you’re halfway down the mountain. Essentially, when you successfully get out of that groove, that is brain plasticity! It's changing the way that your brain figures out a problem or attacks some sort of environmental stimuli.

“It's one thing to decide something cognitively, but something else to be able to actually change. Habits, when they get that ingrained, get triggered without our thoughts and can only be undone with a lot of conscious effort.” – Steve Joordens

BrainShape to Help you Build your Brain Health Journey

BrainShape’s goal is to help adults over the age of 60 build an optimal life that will ensure a strong and active mind. BrainShape provides resources, tools and inspiration. The objective is to empower individuals to create their own healthy lives, and to promote brain health and wellness.

In line with the scientific community, at BrainShape, we believe that the brain is plastic and malleable. But brain fitness is a unique and different experience for everyone. Why? Because you are unique. Everyone has different interests, goals, and objectives. There's no one size fits all solution to brain fitness. The power to keep your brain fit and healthy is in your own hands. There's no finite list of activities to do. That's the one piece that I find so frustrating, when reading newspaper and magazine articles, the list of “brain activities” at the end of the article. There is no list. It's about finding what your interests are and what your desires are and what your personal capacity is and to building your brain fitness goals around that.

What is challenging for me is different than what's going to be challenging for someone else. It's really important to think about what is required for you to be active in terms of your mind and your body. What my dad does to be physically and mentally active is definitely different from what my mom needs to do. It’s really about designing your “brain activities” based on your own person-centered needs and requirements. The fundamentals of brain fitness is to exercise your brain with activities that are based on your hobbies and your own interests. But, it’s not just about doing what you like, and that's it. It's about doing what you like and enjoy, but then pushing yourself - ever so slightly - outside of your comfort zone to create a little bit of a challenge for yourself. The challenge should be stimulating, but not so challenging that you burn yourself out. It just has to be a little bit of extra effort.

Three Steps to Building your Brain Health Journey

1. Identify your interests and hobbies. What do you already like to do and what are you interested in learning more about?

2. Create SMART goals. Create goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time bound. You want to get really clear about how it is that you want to create a goal for yourself - based on your interests and your hobbies - that you can really achieve.

3. Own your new identity. Owning your new identity is believing that you're capable of whatever new goal you are setting for yourself. Whether it's learning a new language or playing the piano, it has to be sort of based in a foundation of who you are and who you're capable of being to be able to come to fruition.

Listen to the Full Lecture

If you want to listen to Dr. Andrea’s entire talk on “Exploring and Developing Tools for Staying Engaged as We Age” – including tools for mild cognitive impairment and dementia that Dr. Andrea helped develop and evaluate when she was a postdoc at the University of Toronto - you can access all of her slides and listen to the full audio at the University of Toronto’s website for the Institute for Life Course & Aging by clicking here.

If you’re interested in getting your hands on the Brain Boosting Starter Kit, email Dr. Andrea at Andrea@BrainShape.ca to request your free copy today!