Page 38 - Mind Games The Aging Brain and How to Keep it Healthy

22 • Chapter 2

learning preferences. While you were reading, whether or
not you previously knew about the concept of learning
styles, did you wonder why we have different learning pref-
erences? Is one child born to be a visual learner, another an
auditory learner, and still another a kinesthetic learner? Is
this a preference we develop? Is it a preference we can in-
fluence or change?
To answer these questions, this chapter will tell you how
the brain works. You will discover how your brain develops
as you grow, and how different parts of your brain react
while you are performing a variety of activities. You also will
see how through disease, damage, or disuse, mental ability
may be impaired or lost. This book is not intended to aid
those who have lost mental ability due to disease or trau-
matic damage. However, it will show you how you can re-
cover loss of mental ability as a result of disuse.
Many old notions about the brain and how we learn
have been overturned during the past Decade of the Brain.
It was commonly thought, for example, that we had only a
fixed number of brain cells and that when we lost them to
disease, trauma, or old age, we did not replace them in the
way we renewed other body cells. We believed that brain
cells could be destroyed but not replaced. We also antici-
pated that we would lose some of our mental agility as a
normal result of the aging process. Brain research in this
decade reversed those notions. Research just recently indi-
cated that certain areas of the brain, such as the hippocam-
pus, can generate replacement cells throughout your life
1
span. We also know now that we can grow new connections
between the brain cells at a rapid rate if we use our brains in
new and novel ways, regardless of our age.
In the same manner that understanding how an engine
functions helps a mechanic to fine-tune a motor, understand-
ing the functions of your brain will aid you in fine-tuning
your mental abilities. Accordingly, some groundwork must
be laid before delving directly into the many methods you
can use to counteract the effects of aging on your mental
processes.