May 12, 2009
Brain gym
tschorda/FLICKR
This morning’s All Things Considered featured a brainy piece about mind exercise by Linton Weeks.
Some of the things we learned:
- more sleep, less food, and lots of exercise can make you smarter
- one way to improve your memory is to give it a workout by (drum roll please…….) remembering things
- you can improve sensory memory by closing your eyes and smelling everything in your kitchen
- working memory can be improved by doing something I’m pretty sure no one reading this will actually try:
Name the U.S. presidents, going backward from Barack Obama to John F. Kennedy. Then, arrange them in chronological order starting with Kennedy, assigning each his proper party affiliation (so, Kennedy — Democrat; Johnson — Democrat; etc.). Next, list them alphabetically.