The best thing to do for your brain | David Eagleman on The TED Interview

What advice would you give to someone who's i  don't know in their 40s 50s 60s yeah 70s 80s. . .

like how yeah what what should we do to to to to  be the best stewards of our brain? I'll tell you it's so easy it's to seek novelty it's to seek  challenge. So the key is for most people as they get older they you know whatever they their  lives shrink they watch Jerry Springer they do whatever they're doing but the but the the key  is challenging stuff so there's this study that's been going on for decades you may know about this  called um the religious orders study where a whole bunch of nuns and convents volunteer to give  their brains upon their death.

So what happened is um the researchers started examining these you  know histological samples and realized that some fractures nuns had Alzheimer's disease and their  brains were physically getting chewed up with the Alzheimer's and yet nobody knew it when they  were alive they just weren't showing the cognitive deficits. Okay so to a big understanding that what  was going on was they lived in the convents until the day they died they had social interaction they  had chores and responsibilities they played games they had conversations they were doing all kinds  of stuff and as a result even though their brain was physically degenerating with the ravages of  the disease, they were building new bridges new roadways all the time and and as a result they  were able to essentially fight back against the the degeneration of the tissue. This is the  important thing is to always seek challenges and by-- go ahead.

No I was going  to say is it challenges that that um themselves vary so if someone if  someone finds doing a crossword challenging but they do it every day and keep doing  it is that good or is that actually or playing bridge every week or something  like that or is it actually much better to mix that up and actually no I'm going to  travel to a new place and whatever. Soon as you get good at the crossword puzzles you  got to drop that and do something that's hard. The key is to be between the levels of frustrating  but achievable and uh and that's where you always want to keep yourself in life and as long as  you're there as long as you're there you're doing the best thing you can do for you I mean this  is I-I- I'm not.

If you're between frustrating and achievable you're always frustrated and  never achieving that's just to say [laughter].