Roderick Gilkey

Clint Kilts

<article-ideainbrief class="article-ideainbrief">
 <h4 class="ideainbrief-title">The Idea in Brief</h4>
 <div class="ideainbrief-contents">
  <p>What do Alan Greenspan, Warren Buffett, and Sumner Redstone have in common? They’re still at the peak of their intellectual powers despite their advanced ages, defying the widespread belief that our mental capacity inevitably deteriorates as we get older.</p>
  <p>Leaders who are as sharp at 60 as they were at 25 constantly hone their <strong>cognitive fitness:</strong> their ability to reason, remember, learn, plan, and adapt. According to Gilkey and Kilts, such executives practice specific techniques to stimulate development of new brain cells and neural networks: They use indirect experiences such as observation or simulations to form new neural pathways, regularly engage in play, search for patterns in seemingly unrelated fields of endeavor, and seek novel experiences.</p>
  <p>But the best leaders do more than just enhance their own cognitive fitness. They also promote “brain-positive” cultures in their organizations by encouraging colleagues and employees to apply these four practices as well.</p>
  <p>The Idea in Practice</p>
  <p>Gilkey and Kilts recommend these practices for achieving cognitive fitness:</p>
  <h2>Use Experiences to Grow Your Brain</h2>
  <p>While direct experience is key to enhancing mental capacity, your brain also has specialized nerve cells that enable you to form new neural networks through indirect experiences such as observation, simulations, and case studies. These indirect experiences accelerate your learning and present you with fresh perspectives valuable for informed decision making. It’s like watching a golf pro demonstrate the correct stance and swing: You learn from his experience by gaining a mental image of the correct actions to take.</p>
  <h2>Work Hard at Play</h2>
  <p>Play engages the prefrontal cortex, responsible for your highest-level cognitive functions—including self-knowledge, memory, mental imagery, and incentive and reward processing. To get the most out of play, participate in games and activities involving risk. Risk alerts the brain and activates your reason and imagination capacities. Activities like bridge, chess, sudoku, role-playing games, and challenging crossword puzzles all provide rigorous neural workouts. Encourage structured play environments in your organization, such as the Zen dens, play spaces, and chat chambers at a host of various Silicon Valley companies.</p>
  <h2>Search for Patterns</h2>
  <p>Pattern recognition is crucial for executives trying to make sense of a rapidly changing business environment. Through pattern recognition, you scan the environment, create meaning from large amounts of seemingly unrelated data, and rapidly assess situations so you can take quick, appropriate action.</p>
  <p>To cultivate pattern recognition in your brain, challenge and expand your existing mind-set, experiencing new places (for example, visiting a museum and talking with locals during business trips), and listening to different viewpoints. Identify patterns in what you’re seeing to generate innovative business ideas.</p>
  <h2>Seek Novelty</h2>
  <p>Novel experiences stimulate your brain to generate the new knowledge needed for pattern recognition. To give your brain the novelty it needs, engage in challenging activities such as studying a new language, learning to paint, trying your hand at new technologies, or taking lessons on a musical instrument you’ve never played before.</p>
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</article-ideainbrief><p>Winston Churchill was outspoken on the sacred rites of smoking cigars and drinking alcohol before, after, and during meals—and in the intervals in between. But he was also exceptionally active mentally. As historians have duly noted, Churchill went on to live until 90. That speaks volumes for the information that is now coming to light about how the brain can affect the body.</p>

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<p><span class="reprint">Reprint: R0711B</span></p>
<p>Recent neuroscientific research shows that the health of your brain isn&#8217;t, as experts once thought, just the product of childhood experiences and genetics; it reflects your adult choices and experiences as well. Professors Gilkey and Kilts of Emory University&#8217;s medical and business schools explain how you can strengthen your brain&#8217;s anatomy, neural networks, and cognitive abilities, and prevent functions such as memory from deteriorating as you age.</p>
<p>The brain&#8217;s alertness is the result of what the authors call cognitive fitness&#8212;a state of optimized ability to reason, remember, learn, plan, and adapt. Certain attitudes, lifestyle choices, and exercises enhance cognitive fitness. Mental workouts are the key. Brain-imaging studies indicate that acquiring expertise in areas as diverse as playing a cello, juggling, speaking a foreign language, and driving a taxicab expands your neural systems and makes them more communicative. In other words, you can alter the physical makeup of your brain by learning new skills.</p>
<p>The more cognitively fit you are, the better equipped you are to make decisions, solve problems, and deal with stress and change. Cognitive fitness will help you be more open to new ideas and alternative perspectives. It will give you the capacity to change your behavior and realize your goals. You can delay senescence for years and even enjoy a second career.</p>
<p>Drawing from the rapidly expanding body of neuroscience research as well as from well-established research in psychology and other mental health fields, the authors have identified four steps you can take to become cognitively fit: understand how experience makes the brain grow, work hard at play, search for patterns, and seek novelty and innovation. Together these steps capture some of the key opportunities for maintaining an engaged, creative brain.</p>

Cognitive Fitness

Reprint: R0711B Recent neuroscientific research shows that the health of your brain isn’t, as experts once thought, just the product of childhood experiences and genetics; it reflects your adult choices and experiences as well. Professors Gilkey and Kilts of Emory University’s medical and business schools explain how you can strengthen your brain’s anatomy, neural networks, and cognitive abilities, and prevent functions such as memory from deteriorating as you age. The brain’s alertness is the result of what the authors call cognitive fitness—a state of optimized ability to reason, remember, learn, plan, and adapt. Certain attitudes, lifestyle choices, and exercises enhance cognitive fitness. Mental workouts are the key. Brain-imaging studies indicate that acquiring expertise in areas as diverse as playing a cello, juggling, speaking a foreign language, and driving a taxicab expands your neural systems and makes them more communicative. In other words, you can alter the physical makeup of your brain by learning new skills. The more cognitively fit you are, the better equipped you are to make decisions, solve problems, and deal with stress and change. Cognitive fitness will help you be more open to new ideas and alternative perspectives. It will give you the capacity to change your behavior and realize your goals. You can delay senescence for years and even enjoy a second career. Drawing from the rapidly expanding body of neuroscience research as well as from well-established research in psychology and other mental health fields, the authors have identified four steps you can take to become cognitively fit: understand how experience makes the brain grow, work hard at play, search for patterns, and seek novelty and innovation. Together these steps capture some of the key opportunities for maintaining an engaged, creative brain.

Cognitive Fitness

Summary.

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