Brain Back Up Plan

My scores on the Lumosity games have humbled me.  It's a good thing I have a brain back up plan to help fill in those little memory gaps.  Actually, I used to have little gaps on the road to remembering such things as names and the location of needed items.  Lately, those little gaps are more like the big potholes that have plagued Minneapolis drivers this spring.
My solution for lost items has been to create an 'object central'.  A desk organizer in a previous life, it now has a prominent place on a room divider in the center of my home.  I'm training myself to deposit watch, keys, misc jewelry, stray pens and other miscellany there.  It seems to work really great--unless I'm really desperate to find something and Murphy's law is operating.
I've also taken to making lists, a practice religiously avoided in the past since I'd noticed that putting an item on the list brought the same sense of accomplishment as actually doing the task.  The lists I'm gathering have less to do with tasks that definitely need doing, and more to do with remembering little things--like a book that sounds interesting or the name of a movie recommended by a friend or a website that is referenced in an article.
Next time--the big bug-a-boos:  Names and misc effemera.  (I read an article that suggested learning and using a new word every day will keep you sharp.  My word of the day is effemera which refers to things that need to be retained for only a limited time--such as where you parked your car at the shopping center.)

Updates

Since my previous post on brain games http://wisewellsenior.blogspot.com/2010_03_17_archive.html I've discovered the Lumosity web site.  Give it a try!  http://www.lumosity.com/

Here's an update on Collin http://wisewellsenior.blogspot.com/2010_03_04_archive.html.  He's been home now for several weeks and doing great.  His mom reports that he runs all over and the blue tinge has been replaced by pink cheeks.  She's also changed his usual bedtime ritual of bundling up his feet and legs and arms to keep him warm.  With his new circulation, all the bundling makes him too hot.

A Certain Unrelenting Optimism

Photo by alan cleaver

Crossword puzzles remind me of my mom in happier days before her struggle with Parkinson's disease and her descent into confusion.  I remember, too, the laughter that punctuated that long slide.  Laughter marking battles won even as we lost the war.  Comic relief.  Tender humor.  Alternative to tears.
Not that Mom ever had much time for crossword puzzles with a husband and 13 children to care for.  During a very lean time in our family's life,  the Des Moines Register published "Prizeword Pete."  By solving a seemingly simple puzzle, you could get a lot of money.  Enough money, it seemed to me, to solve all our problems.
"Look at this," she said to me, holding out the Sunday paper page.  We pored over it together, then, certain that we had it right, we sent it to the paper.  What a week that was!  Would the good news come by phone or mail?  Be announced in the next Sunday's paper?
The puzzle was a trick, the clues red herrings.  Nobody won.  Mom was undaunted.  "Look, there's a new puzzle.  We can try again."
The experience cultivated the crossword puzzle gene in me--and a certain, unrelenting optimism.  Mom's experience in her later years has cultivated my interest in brain function.

Crossword Puzzle Challenge Enough?

So what about those crossword puzzles?  Does doing them help maintain mental acuity?  I'd like to think so. I inherited the crossword puzzle gene from both sides of my family and have been doing these puzzles ever since I learned to read. 
Which means that there are well-worn pathways in my brain for figuring out words that lead to other words that reveal quips and quotes and sundry other themes.  Which means that, for me, crossword puzzles don't meet the requirements for a novel, challenging activity that builds new pathways. 
I'm challenging my brain with soduku, which has had the added benefit of sending me to search engines for help figuring out how to solve them.  I found this site useful: http://www.sudokucentral.com/how-to-solve-sudoku.  Using search engines has been found useful for 'brain training'.  Type 'how to solve soduku' into your favorite search engine and investigate several sites to find the one most helpful to you!
From a scientific point of view, the jury is still out on whether doing puzzles and games helps maintain brain function.  There's agreement, though, that it can't hurt and it's better than doing nothing.

Brain Training Program

As promised, here's my list of principles for brain training and what I'm doing with them:
1.  Don't forget the basics:  exercise, nutrition, safety.  Until a couple of years ago, I got up in all
     weather and walked outside at 4:30 almost every morning.   The aerobic exercise finally saturated my brain with enough oxygen to recognize that this was risky behavior--a realization helped along by a home invasion that occurred along my walking route.  Now my morning routine includes exercise videos by Leslie Sansone or Debbie Rocker or a session with wii fit.  Here's a sample of Leslie Sansone:  Go to  http://www.realage.com/videos/?bclid=5030523001 .  Select the walking videos to the right of the screen.
2.  In addition to exercising your body, exercise your brain.  Challenge your brain by learning something new, by doing something outside your comfort zone, by kicking familiar activities up a notch.  Brain games, like those mentioned in the last post are a fine addition as long as you vary them to exercise multiple brain functions.  One I like is http://hubpages.com/hub/Brain-Fitness-Exersizes  In addition to the exercises, there are some good principles listed.  Learning new computer programs is frequently mentioned as good for making new neurons, as is learning a foreign language.

Brain Games

Image by Alejandro Peters

Things that make you go hmmm

• Article on the Medscape Nursing site: Brain Fitness Games Improve Delayed Memory in Elderly Adults
  Pam Harrison reports a study showing that playing the Dakim  Brainfitness computerized program improved certain types of memory in elderly adults who played the game consistently for 6 months.  She quotes Dr Gary Small , a source I trust, as stating that the results are encouraging.  I went to Dakim.com, sampled some interesting games, and checked out their company blog--also interesting.  The price is daunting--$2299.00 plus $19.99 a month.
• A recent e mail from Prevention  http://www.brainpowergameplan.com/uof/brainpowergameplan/   suggests you can improve all aspects of your brain functioning up to 78% in just four weeks.  Cost of book is four installments of $6.50 each plus shipping and handling.
• Claims I've noticed in several sources that making small changes, such as brushing your teeth with your non dominant hand will improve aspects of brain functioning.
• A common belief among my friends that doing crossword puzzles will preserve your brain function. 

From what I've read, there's good science supporting the idea that exercising your brain will improve its functioning.  Neuroplasticity refers to the brain's ability to reorganize itself by creating new neural connections throughout life, and it's the concept behind brain training.  In the next post, I'll list some general principles to take advantage of neuroplasticity and what I'm choosing to do about them.

Miracles

An important milestone for Collin.  Over the last few days, the medical staff have freed him from most of the tubes and wires that tethered him to the ICU.  The word on the street here, Mom posts on Caring Bridge, is that we're leaving the ICU for the regular floor.  The tone of the post is jubilant, and just a little tinged with dread.  Her little butterfly is emerging from his cocoon, but what if his wings are still wet?  Collin's textbook recovery, so different from his earlier procedures with their seemingly endless complications, has her waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Don't stop praying yet! 
Is Collin's recovery a triumph of medical science or some other kind of miracle?  Have we stormed heaven and been heard?  I believe that something in the universe responds to us, that there's a power for good that we can use to influence the course of events.  I don't think it's a God that answers prayers according to some arbitrary criteria.
Maybe it works this way.  A single drop of water has to hit hard and long to make an impact on a rock.  A lot of us focusing together on the same goal can unleash a torrent to lift that rock right up and float it away.  Thank you Caring Bridge for bringing us together.  I found a website that's trying to prove a similar notion:  http://www.theintentionexperiment.com/