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For many years, the prevailing belief among scientists and medical professionals was that humans were endowed with a finite number of brain cells at birth, incapable of generating new ones. Alzheimer’s disease was largely seen as a genetic fate, unavoidable and irreversible.
This assumption led to the conclusion that brain aging was an irreversible process. However, recent research has challenged these outdated notions, revealing the human brain’s extraordinary capacity for renewal and expansion, surpassing even the most advanced computers in complexity.
Despite the potential for damage due to injury or illness, the brain has the remarkable ability to generate new cells, reconfigure its connections, and even enlarge. With proper care and mental stimulation, the brain’s capabilities can be enhanced, making it more adept at various tasks.
A study published in The Lancet in 2024 highlights that adopting healthier lifestyle choices could prevent nearly half (45 percent) of dementia cases, thanks to the identification of 14 factors that individuals can modify.
Moreover, possessing the ApoE4 gene variant, associated with Alzheimer’s, does not seal one’s fate. Engaging in regular physical activity has been shown to significantly lower the risk of developing this condition.
And even having the ApoE4 gene variant, linked with linked with Alzheimer’s, doesn’t mean you will inevitably end up developing the disease. In fact, regular physical exercise can significantly reduce the risk.
A 2012 study by US researchers from St Louis University examined levels of abnormal amyloid proteins associated with Alzheimer’s in people who led sedentary lives and compared them with people who were highly active, both with and without the ApoE4 variant.
They found that those with the ApoE4 variant who were very physically active had the same, low level of amyloid as those who didn’t have the ApoE4 gene.
Research has shown that the human brain is more complex than any computer and capable of seemingly miraculous feats of rejuvenation
Everyone experiences dementia differently. Use this checklist to help you make a note of your symptoms before you talk to your GP.
In other words, exercise alone had negated the elevated risk, at least in terms of amyloid accumulation in the brain, underlining the power of making lifestyle changes to help keep your brain healthy well into old age whatever your family background.
But this is not simply about preventing a slide into dementia in the future. I have devised practical steps you can take to make your brain sharper and quicker right now.
As a leading neurologist and professor at the Mind/Brain Institute at Johns Hopkins University in the US, I have developed a simple, science-based 12-week programme to help you improve your memory, solve problems more easily and help keep dementia at bay.
My Brain Fitness Programme forms the basis of my new book, The Invincible Brain, which I am sharing exclusively with Daily Mail readers in a three-part series starting today.
The programme, which also draws on my decades of experience with patients, is based on five key pillars – exercise, sleep, nutrition, adopting a calmer mindset and brain training techniques. And it’s backed by solid science.
In a 2016 study, involving 127 patients at my NeuroGrow Brain Fitness Centre in Washington DC, 84 per cent of patients gained remarkable improvements in their objective, validated tests and scored higher on cognitive assessments in just 12 weeks. MRI scans showed that more than half had grown the size of their hippocampus – the area involved in memory – by 3 per cent.
In effect, their brains had become about three years younger in just 12 weeks.
Similarly encouraging results came from a 2020 trial involving patients of all ages who had persistent concussion symptoms months or even years after sustaining brain injuries.
More than 80 per cent had significant improvements in attention, mood, sleep and memory as well as in objective tests of cognitive functions.
As a leading neurologist and professor at the Mind/Brain Institute at Johns Hopkins University, I have developed a science-based 12-week programme to help you improve your memory
Your malleable brain is also exquisitely personalised, based on your environment, experiences and the way you’ve used it.
A good example of this adaptability – or neuroplasticity – is the Iranian artist, Zohreh Etezad Saltaneh, who was born with a congenital disability that stunted the growth of her hands.
Yet she learned to cook, weave and paint with her toes – and became an artist, whose work has been shown in 60 exhibitions worldwide. Her abilities were not located in her arms and hands, but in her brain.
The important rule to remember is: what you use grows; what you don’t shrinks. Which is why the key is to continually challenge your brain.
When you learn something new or practise something challenging, your neurons develop more connections.
This was illustrated by a Swedish study involving 14 young adults who became fluent in either Russian or Arabic after a three-month intensive course organised by the country’s armed forces. The language students were compared with a group of regular university students of the same age; before and after MRI scans were taken of both groups.
Compared with the control group of regular university students, the language course ones developed more brain connections and a significant increase in their hippocampus size in just three months – while the control group showed no change.
What’s in your head
To better understand how my advice can help you to improve your brain health, it’s helpful to take a closer look at how this mighty organ works.
Your thoughts, emotions, plans, dreams and actions all originate in your brain, beginning with neurons (brain cells) fed by oxygen and nutrients.
The intricate connecting networks, or synapses, are also vital, as are the numerous specialist ‘helper’ cells that enable the whole system to work smoothly and efficiently.
Broadly speaking, we tend to associate different areas of the brain with different functions. Your higher cognitive functions happen in the cortex – the outer layer that surrounds and communicates with all other brain regions and has an incredible ability to learn and adapt.
Meanwhile, your hippocampus plays a key role in memory and learning. You might find it helpful to think of the different parts of the brain as neighbourhoods in a bustling city. Each has its own characteristics, but they’re connected by networks – like busy Metro lines – which transfer signals and carry the constant flow of information that keeps the whole ‘city’ of your brain alive and thriving.
The principal networks are responsible for our main cognitive functions – language, the ability to focus on significant details, vision, our emotions, planning and decision-making and physical movement.
It’s also important to remember that the brain doesn’t exist in isolation: it’s intimately connected to all the other cells, organs, muscles and tissues in the body.
Under normal circumstances, your neurons and their support team work well together. Oxygen and nutrients arrive through the blood vessels, waste is cleared away via the glymphatic system during sleep, and oligodendrocytes – specialised ‘insulating’ cells in the central nervous system – ensure electrical signals race across networks.
But challenges such as obesity or uncontrolled diabetes can throw the system off balance by damaging blood vessels and limiting the supply of oxygen and nutrients to the brain.
Poor sleep interferes with the brain’s nightly cleaning system and excess stress or alcohol can disrupt its normal firing patterns, resulting in faulty operating of the brain’s networks.
For a while, specialised cells can keep things stable. But if problems persist, they can get overwhelmed, adding to inflammation that damages neurons and leading to brain fog and memory decline.
How memories are made
People often think of memory as recalling something from the past – a childhood memory or where you left your keys. But it’s more complex than that.
Memory is changeable and is constantly being reinterpreted through our understanding of the world and our emotions.
So how are memories formed? Research has identified four key stages:
- Acquisition: Your brain takes in sights, sounds and sensations from the outside world. But to record them successfully, you need to be paying attention. What you focus on becomes the foundation of your memory. This step relies on the prefrontal cortex, which registers something new and holds it in one place ready to be processed.
- Consolidation: This is a behind‑the-scenes process of organising and stabilising what’s just been gathered – a bit like sorting snapshots in an album. The hippocampus plays a key role in determining what is worth remembering and what is ‘irrelevant’, since your brain can’t store every memory.
- Storage: Once organised and encoded, each memory component is stored in a corresponding part of the cortex, which acts like a filing cabinet. A new face will be stored in the visual cortex, while a song will go in the auditory cortex.
- Retrieval: This brings memories back to life, allowing you to recall a vivid scene or how to ride a bike. During retrieval, an event’s components come together in a process involving many parts of the cortex – sights, sounds, tastes and sensations all pieced back together into one coherent story.
START WITH THIS BRAIN FITNESS CALCULATOR
Use my Brain Fitness Calculator to assess how your brain is currently performing and identify what you’d like to work on.
Repeat the test after six weeks and again at the end – by which point the differences should be obvious. The more strictly you follow my programme, the better your results will be.
This calculator focuses on essential brain care elements to help you discover how well you are taking care of your brain now, so that you can assess what to work on during the 12-week programme.
CREATE A ‘MIND PALACE’, AND USE IT TO MEMORISE YOUR BANK CARD NUMBER
This memory-improving technique involves mentally placing information to be remembered in specific locations in an imagined physical space, such as a palace or building. You then mentally ‘walk’ through that space to retrieve the information when needed.
Here’s how to use a memory palace to memorise your credit card numbers:
- Get your credit card and look at, or write down, the number, expiration date and code. Let’s say it is 5500 6602 8653 3362, expiration: 04/48, code: 629. We will place each of these groups of numbers on a familiar path you take every day.
- Imagine a path from your bedroom to your bathroom, kitchen, front door and garage or outdoor parking space.
- Mentally place a image of 5500 on your bedside table. Picture them as thick white blocks in your head, make sure they are firmly fixed in your memory. This should take no more than three to five minutes when you first try it.
- Picture 6602 written in large bold red letters below your shower. It looks ridiculous but that’s the idea. Repeat this number and memorise it for three to five minutes.
- Go back and picture seeing the number 5500 on your bedside table, then imagine walking to the bathroom and seeing the 6602 in your shower. This reinforces the memories and the order.
- Picture walking into the kitchen and seeing 8653 in large black block numbers next to your coffee maker. Close your eyes and repeat 8653 as you envisage your kitchen counter. Repeat for three to five minutes.
- Go back to the beginning of your route and repeat all three sets of numbers: 5500 on the bedside table, 6602 in the shower, and 8653 by the coffee maker.
- Repeat the same process for the number 3362 — picture it in large brown blocks standing in your front doorway. Again, repeat the entire journey in your mind.
- Now you’re in the garage or by your car outside – you see 04/48 written on your windscreen. Imagine getting upset because you must clean the windscreen. Repeat 04/48 as you clean the glass. Now repeat the entire number: 5500 6602 8653 3362, expiration: 04/48.
- Picture opening your car door and seeing 629 carved on your seat with a knife The more clearly you visualise this, the better you will remember it.
- Finally, repeat the whole thing from the beginning to the end: 5500 6602 8653 3362, expiration: 04/48, code: 629.
This drill may take 30 minutes the first time you do it but, as you improve, you may easily do it in five or ten minutes.
This technique requires no exceptional skills.
Tricks to improve your memory
Many people worry about their memory, often fearing that mid-life lapses are an early sign of Alzheimer’s disease. In my experience, this is rarely the case.
Yet it always amazes me that people expect their memory to work perfectly all the time, without any effort.
You wouldn’t expect to run a marathon without training – and having a stellar memory is no different.
Luckily there are numerous tricks you can practise. Here are some of my favourites.
People worry that mid-life lapses in memory are an early sign of Alzheimer’s disease – but there are numerous tricks to improve your memory
Name recollection
Before you meet someone new, excite your brain by offering yourself a reward for remembering a name – say an imagined £10,000.
This will rev up the prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain that energises other areas, including the hippocampus.
Then use the acronym N.A.M.E.
Notice their face in detail, the tone of their voice and guess their age.
Ask their name and repeat it loudly and clearly, saying it out loud. This is important as the brain remembers spoken material better than silently read material.
Memorise by repeating it two or three times during the conversation. Listen for other details that help fix them in your mind, such as where they live.
Ensure you have the name embedded before you end the conversation and imagine the £10,000 you are about to earn. The more emotion you invest into the memory, the more likely you are to remember.
Finding items
Always put items such as door keys or your purse in the same place every time. If you can’t, because you are in an unfamiliar place, say out loud, in a silly or exaggerated accent: ‘I’m just putting my wallet here, darling.’ Or: ‘Why, I say, I’ll set my keys right here on the desk.’
The idea is to make it funny – attaching emotion to something will make it more memorable.
Parking a car
The nightmare of losing your car in a multi-storey car park can be eased by this simple trick. Suppose you’ve parked in Zone B, level 4, north. Imagine four bears (B is for ‘bears’, 4 is the level) looking up at the North Star.
Keep that image in your head the whole way to the lift or exit. The funnier it is, the more memorable it will be.
Recalling why you are in a room
Many people forget why they entered a room.
Research shows the best way to remember is to retrace your steps to where you were before you entered.
This will often trigger the reason – whether something you see reminds you, or you recall what you were thinking about.
