Make Your Brain Fit

Cognitive Fitness.
By: Gilkey, Roderick, Kilts, Clint,
Harvard Business Review,
Nov 2007, Vol. 85, Issue 11



Brain-imaging studies indicate, for example, that acquired expertise in areas as diverse as playing a cello, juggling, speaking a foreign language, and driving a taxicab expands and makes more communicative the neural systems in the parts of the brain responsible for motor control and spatial navigation. In other words, you can make physical changes in your brain by learning new skills.

So how can you become cognitively fit?

Understand How Experience Makes the Brain Grow

Work Hard at Play

Search for Patterns

Seek Novelty and Innovation



Exercising Your Brain: A Personal Program

Manage by walking about.
Read funny books.
Play games.
Act out.
Find what you're not learning and learn
Take notes - and then go back and read them.
Try new technologies.
Learn a new language or instrument.
Exercise, exercise, exercise.


Roderick Gilkey is an associate professor of organization and management at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University in Atlanta and an associate professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Emory University School of Medicine. Clint Kilts is the Dr. Paul Janssen Professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences.