Mental Stimulation and Brain Health

The human brain is the most elegant information processing system, and benefits from “novel and complex” stimuli. I have used these two words when presenting my brain health lifestyle® and colleagues will be critical of me when I forget to do so. Novelty and complexity describe a particular activity that is both new and difficult for you. From a brain health perspective, this means you have not developed neural circuitry to perform the task (because you have not tried it) and hence working on the novel and complex activity is an example of how you can generate new neural connections, yielding a healthier brain. Practice makes perfect is also true for brain health!

The column last month reviewed the importance of physical activity as one of the five pillars of a brain health lifestyle ® and this month we focus on mental stimulation. Since the brain is a grand information processing system, it is constantly encoding and manipulates hundreds of thousands of bits of information provided by each of the five sensory systems almost every second. It is really beyond our ability to fully comprehend how sophisticated the human brain is, but it is important to understand that we all are empowered to shape our brain and to steer the types of environmental input and thought processes that enable brain health.

A paradigm-changing paper was published in 1998 that indicated the adult human brain can generate new brain cells (neurogenesis)! This had the same impact as our discovering the Earth is round and not flat. Before 1998, we believed the brain had a “critical period of brain development” (see Dr. Spock) which occurred the first few years of life. A recent paper published in 2026 in a prestigious journal now indicates the human brain generates new brain cells into late life, another seismic finding. It appears the hippocampus, the structure that sits under each temporal lobe and is responsible for memory and new learning, is a major region for neurogenesis. The critical question is how we promote such neurogenesis and shaping of the brain from a mental stimulation perspective.

In many of my talks across the nation, interested people will ask me if their completion of crossword puzzles is good for their brain. I turn the question around on them and ask them if that activity is novel and complex for them. If they answer yes, I will encourage them to continue doing that activity. If they say no, I do not tell them to stop the activity, but I do educate them on our understanding that novel and complex activity promotes brain health and passive and rote behaviors do not. Therein lies a key for you: introduce activities into your lifestyle that are new and difficult and try to minimize those activities that are rote and passive. The brain will respond favorably, both structurally and functionally, by doing those activities that are more challenging for you.

Research on mental stimulation and brain health has identified activities that provide brain health promotion across the lifespan:

• Language development is a universal behavior critical to neurobiological and psychosocial development. Stronger language skills relate to enhanced brain health and better resistance to neurodegeneration.
• American Sign Language has been shown to enhance the language system in hearing and deaf infants and to promote their intelligence and articulation ability by the second grade. Since language development early in life promotes brain health late in life, it is a practical brain health activity for all parents and newborns.
• Higher levels of education including lifelong learning are related to brain health and brain resilience, delaying onset of potential clinical signs of dementia.
• Travel exposes the brain to novel and complex environments and has been shown to promote brain health and build brain resilience. You can also get benefit from traveling to a familiar destination (work or home) by using a new route.
• Art, playing an instrument, improvisation, or any activity that is novel and complex for you will promote your brain health and nurture structural and functional growth in your brain.
• Critical thinking and problem solving associated with one’s occupation, committee work, board games, puzzles, and digital brain fitness help to provide brain healthy mental stimulation.

The common thread that underscores what activities will be most beneficial to your own brain health is novelty and complexity. Mental stimulation and exposing our brains to information processing that is new and difficult offers the short-term benefit of new learning, but perhaps more importantly, nurtures the long-term neurophysiological outcome of brain resilience that reflects brain health and offers defense against onset of the clinical signs of neurodegeneration.

Brain health lifestyle® empowers you to shape your brain for structural and functional health regardless of age. The five pillars are all important and each is integrated with the other. This column focused on mental stimulation and the types of activities you decide to engage is critical. We all tend to behave in routinized and procedural ways, but while these are easy and do not even use conscious systems in our brain, they do not promote brain health and brain resilience in ways that novel and complex activities do. As such, be mindful of some of the activities you can complete daily that are new and difficult for you (those you do not perform well or have resisted), and you will derive a greater boost in brain health.

Across our lifespan, our ability to follow a brain health lifestyle® will create both short-term and long-term brain health benefits. We can control our inner thoughts and choose the environmental input that shapes our brains for health. Positive internal thinking about self and others and activities that are novel and complex provide a blueprint for brain health. I often smile when I hear others declare, “I feel more comfortable with this” after they have practiced a particular activity. I realize that the only way they feel more comfortable is because their practice has resulted in development of neural circuitry to permit them to complete the activity. While not rocket science, it is truly amazing because it reflects our control over the shaping of our brains! Get started today on an activity that is novel and complex to you and your journey to brain health will have started!