It doesn't matter if youre a Harvard graduate or street educatedthere is still plenty you can do to improve and expand your

mind. Boosting your cognitive abilities doesn't have to mean studying hard or becoming a reclusive bookworm. There are lots of different techniques and tactics that can help you flex your grey matter and get more of out your brain cells. You are probably using iMusic to reach peak performance mental states and train your brain, in addition to implementing the mind acceleration strategies found in our success manual, The Mind Accelerator (if not, why not?). But why stop there. Here are 10 easy and fun ways to a healthier and happier brain. NOTE: The first four are brain exercises, or Brainercises, that use your five physical senses in addition to your emotional sense in unusual and novel ways that improve your brain and health, all by simply bringing you to change and alter your habits and normal everyday routines. They are designed to help your brain generate its own nutrients and neurotransmitters that strengthen, preserve, and grow brain cells. These Brainercises can be done anywhere, anytime, in enjoyable, fun and easy ways. But dont let their low tech and simple nature fool you. Each Brainercise can activate underused neural pathways and generate new connections and dendrites, helping you achieve a strong and smart mind.

1. Brainercise: Action Roulette

Want a simple way to strengthen neural connections and even create new ones? It doesnt get any easier than this. And you can do it right

now. Switch the hand you are using to control the computer mouse and use the hand you would normally not use to surf the Web and navigate your computer's operating system. You will most likely notice its harder to be precise and accurate with your motions, mimicking the feeling of first learning to tie your shoelaces. Youll be feeling uncomfortable and awkward but dont worry. Your brain is learning a new way to do something, and this forced re-acclimatization is very good for your mind. You can apply this neural building and strengthening technique to other everyday actions as well. Try using your opposite hand to eat, brush your teeth, dial the phone, operate the TV remote or play tennis. The same brain boosting effect will take place.

2. Brainercise: Multi-Sense A Task

Take any everyday task, and try to include one or more of your senses as you execute. For example, rather than just getting dressed as you normally would, try doing so with your eyes closed. Here are some more ideas: Wash your hair with your eyes closed Enter your home and settle in with your eyes closed (walk to door, find keys, unlock door, greet pet, check messages, etc.) Share a meal and use only visual cues to communicate. No talking.

OR Combine two or more of your five physical senses in a unique way: - Listen to music and smell flowers - Listen to the rain and tap your fingers - Watch clouds and play with modeling clay at the same time

3. Brainercise: Irregulate
Your Life
Rather than doing things in a regular, and habitual way, try doing them in an irregular way to keep your brain guessing and your life fresh. Remember, being sedentary and regular = mental flat lining. Be dynamic and you will love the results. - Go to work on a new route

- Try a new style or ethnicity of food - Shop at new grocery store - Try a new look/style of fashion. - Reorganize and rearrange your office, desk or bedroom.

4. Brainercise: Juggle
It's not just a great party trick for circus performers and street hustlers. Scientists have found that learning to juggle can cause changes in areas of the adult brain. Mastering the skill increases the amount of grey matter in areas of the brain that process and store visual information, proving what was not thought possible -- that new stimuli can alter the brain's structure. A comparison of brain-imaging scans of non-jugglers and other volunteers before they learned to juggle and three months later, revealed an increase in grey matter in certain areas of the newly trained jugglers' brains. "Our results challenge our view of the human central nervous system. Human brains probably must be viewed as dynamic, changing with development and normal learning," said Arne May, of the University of Regensburg in Germany, who headed the research team. Grey matter refers to parts of the brain and spinal cord that are comprised of the tightly packed nuclei of nerve cells. In the brain, it is mainly found in the outer layers of the cerebrum which is responsible for advanced mental functions. In a report in the science journal Nature, May and his colleagues said brain scans done three months after the new jugglers had stopped juggling showed the increase in grey matter had been reduced.

So dont run away to the circus, but try googling learn to juggle and start from there. Youll have fun, gain a skill that will never go out of style and boost your smarts all at once. Most people shoot for two birds, but this tip will bag you three.

5. Schmooze
Talking with friends and schmoozing with everyone and anyone helps keep the mind sharp, a U-M study suggests. "As the population ages, interest has been growing about how to maintain healthy brains and minds," U-M psychologist Oscar Ybarra says. "Most advice for preserving and enhancing mental function emphasizes intellectual activities such as reading, doing crossword puzzles and learning how to use a computer. But my research suggests that just getting together and chatting with friends and family may also be effective." In a series of studies with older and younger adults, Ybarra examined the degree to which social engagement predicted cognitive, or mental, function. In one study, he analyzed data on 3,617 Americans between the ages of 24 and 96, including measures of how often participants reported talking on the phone with friends, neighbors and relatives; how often they reported getting together with them; and how many people they identified with whom they could share their most private feelings and concerns. The interviewers administered a mental exam and a series of arithmetic tasks to assess participants' cognition and working memory. In analyzing the results, Ybarra controlled for physical health and physical activity as well as a range of relevant demographic factors, including age, education, gender, income, marital status and race/ethnicity. "Across all age groups, the more socially engaged participants were, the lower their level of cognitive impairment and the better their working memory performance," says Ybarra, a faculty associate at the Institute for Social Research. In another study, Ybarra analyzed the connection between social engagement and cognitive function, including everyday decision-making, as well as memory and cognition, in nearly 2,000 older residents of four Middle Eastern countries: Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia. Again, he controlled for a wide range of factors that could account for any correlation and found that the more participants reported being socially engaged, the less cognitive impairment they suffered and the more they participated in everyday decision-making. While Ybarra emphasizes that his analysis shows correlations between mental function and social engagement and does not establish causation in either direction, he believes that the link between the two cuts across cultures and is perhaps fundamental to what it means to be human. "To some extent, the human mind evolved to deal with social problems, so it's not surprising that exercising that aspect of our minds has downstream benefits," Ybarra says. "In fact, it may be that our technical prowess depends on our social intelligence. In studies of primates and other mammals, the size of the brain has been correlated with the size of the social group the animals typically form." By encouraging children to develop their social skills, he speculates, parents and teachers also could be helping them to improve their intellectual skills. In the workplace, instead of encouraging employees to keep their noses to computer monitors and complete their tasks, effective supervisors might encourage

them to take plenty of time out to socialize. Here, Ybarra notes, cultural differences often emerge, with Americans generally impatient about mixing socializing and work. "In some other cultures," he says, "people are much more likely to blend the two." The trend is simple. The more you use your brain to chat, gossip and socialize, the more it works for you. Eat lunch with others, go to a social club, join a jogging group, or play pick up hockey. Put yourself out there in a way that works for you and talk your way into greater cognitivity.

6. Play Games + Read

If you always think of your brain as a muscle you can never go wrong (just dont start hurling barbells at your head). So in this vein of thought, finding ways to flex it will pay off. "Read, read, read," says Dr. Amir Soas of Case Western Reserve University Medical School. But dont stop with reading. Do crossword puzzles. Play Scrabble. Start a new hobby or learn to speak a foreign language. "Anything that stimulates the brain to think." Also, watch less television, because "your brain goes into neutral," he said. Want more information as to why this is important? - Challenging the brain early in life is crucial to building up more "cognitive reserve" to counter braindamaging disease, according to Dr. David Bennett of Chicago's Rush University. And, reading-habits prior to age 18 are a key predictor of later cognitive function. - A cognitive psychologist in England found that when elderly people regularly played bingo, it helped minimize their memory loss and bolster their hand-eye coordination. Bingo seemed to help players of all ages remain mentally sharp. - In a study of 193 people believed to have Alzheimer's disease, researchers found that people who participated in fewer leisure activities between the ages of 20 and 60 were 3.85 times more likely to develop Alzheimer's. Most beneficial was spending time in intellectual pursuits. "A passive life is not best for the brain," said Dr. Robert P. Friedland at University Hospitals. So read, and try some of these brain tapping activities (iMusic ThinkFast is an excellent choice for entering the peak performance state for brain games, and getting more out of your mind) . - Sudoku puzzles Bingo -Card games like bridge, poker or solitaire Strategy based video games Chess Backgammon Scrabble Brain teasers Crosswords

7. Step, Pedal or Skate

While this may not be as important for children and teens, as we age our physical health plays more of a role in our mental health. Research has shown that physical exercise has a protective effect on the brain and its mental processes and may even help prevent Alzheimer's disease. Choosing the stairs, the sidewalk, your bike or roller blades when given an opportunity, or going the ultimate route and following a regimented exercise program will yield noticeable dividends as your life unfolds before you. Here is some proof.

Laval University 5-Year Study Based on exercise and health data from nearly 5,000 men and women over 65 years of age, those who exercised were less likely to lose their mental abilities or develop dementia, including Alzheimer's. Furthermore, the five-year study at the Laval University in Sainte-Foy, Quebec suggests that the more a person exercises the greater the protective benefits for the brain, particularly in women. Inactive individuals were twice as likely to develop Alzheimer's, compared to those with the highest levels of activity (exercised vigorously at least three times a week). But even light or moderate exercisers cut their risk significantly for Alzheimer's and mental decline.

Dr. James Blumenthal Psychologist James Blumenthal also points out the long-term importance of exercise for brain function. "We know that in general, exercise improves the heart's ability to pump blood more effectively, as well as increases the blood's oxygen-carrying capacity," he says. "It is thought that one of the reasons why the elderly especially those with coronary artery disease or hypertension tend to suffer some degree of cognitive decline is in part due to a reduction in blood flow to the brain."

Dr. Jeff W. Lichtman When acetylcholine is released at a neuromuscular junction, it crosses the tiny space (synapse) that separates the nerve from the muscle. It then binds to acetylcholine receptor molecules on the muscle fiber's surface. This initiates a chain of events that lead to muscle contraction. Scientists have shown that muscle fiber contains a scaffold made of special proteins that hold these acetylcholine receptors in place. Research led by Jeff W. Lichtman, M.D., Ph.D., at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, indicates that a loss of nerve signals due to inactivity actually disassembles this scaffold and causes a loss of acetylcholine receptors. When the muscle becomes active again; however, the scaffold tightens its grip and catches any receptors that come by. "So muscle activity is a cue to keep a synapse stable, and synaptic inactivity is a cue to disassemble a synapse," says Lichtman, a professor of neurobiology. "So if you lose activity, you lose receptors. But if you regain activity, you get those receptors back."

Dr Barry Bittman Dr. Barry Bittman wrote an article, Mental Gymnastics: Couch Potatoes and Alzheimers, in which he quotes Dr. Robert Friedland and others from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. They recently reported a 2.5 times increased risk for developing Alzheimers disease in the couch potato set.

According to Bittmans article, Friedlands team analyzed leisure time activities performed during early and middle aged adulthood (ages 20-60). These include three categories: passive activities: watching television, talking on the phone, listening to music intellectual activities: reading, jigsaw or crossword puzzles, playing musical instruments, chess or other board games, knitting or woodworking physical activities: baseball, football, or other sports such as bike riding, swimming, walking or skating

Friedland concludes that Alzheimers patients were less active in all these activities except for television watching. More people need to do their power thinking along with power walking.

University of California Research Studies of senior citizens who walk regularly showed significant improvement in memory skills compared to sedentary elderly people. Walking also improved their learning ability, concentration, and abstract reasoning. Stroke risk was cut by 57% in people who walked as little as 20 minutes a day. When the cognitive abilities of elderly women were compared, those who walked regularly were less likely to experience age-related memory loss and other declines in mental function. University of California at San Francisco researchers measured the brain function of nearly 6,000 women during an eight-year period. The results were correlated with the women's normal activity level, including their routine walking and stair-climbing. "In the higher-energy groups, we saw much less cognitive decline," said neurologist Kristine Yaffe, MD. Of the women who walked the least (a half-mile per week), 24% had significant declines in their test scores, compared to only 17% of the most active women (17 miles per week). It wasn't a matter of all or nothing. "We also found that for every extra mile walked per week there was a 13% less chance of cognitive decline," said Yaffe, who is Chief of Geriatric Psychiatry at the San Francisco Veterans Administration Medical Center. "So you don't need to be running marathons. The exciting thing is there was a 'dose' relationship which showed that even a little is good but more is better." "In the higher-energy groups, we saw much less cognitive decline" a protective effect amounting to as much as 40% according to Yaffe. "This is an important intervention that all of us can do and it could have huge implications in preventing cognitive decline.

8. Food For Thought

You are what you eat, and that includes your brain. So what is the ultimate mastermind diet? YOUR brain is the greediest organ in your body, with some quite specific dietary requirements. So it is hardly surprising that what you eat can affect how you think. If you believe the dietary supplement industry, you could become the next Einstein just by popping the right combination of pills. Look closer, however, and it isn't that simple. The savvy consumer should take talk of brain-boosting diets with a pinch of low-sodium salt. But if it is possible to eat your way to genius, it must surely be worth a try.

Eat Breakfast First, go to the top of the class by eating breakfast. The brain is best fuelled by a steady supply of glucose, and many studies haveshown that skipping breakfast reduces people's performance at school and at work. But it isn't simply a matter of getting some calories down. According to research published in 2003, kids breakfasting on fizzy drinks and sugary snacks performed at the level of an average 70-year-old in tests of memory and attention. Beans on toast is a far better combination, as Barbara Stewart from the University of Ulster, UK, discovered. Toast alone boosted children's scores on a variety of cognitive tests, but when the tests got tougher, the breakfast with the high-protein beans worked best. Beans are also a good source of fiber, and other research has shown a link between a highfiber diet and improved cognition. If you can't stomach beans before midday, wholemeal toast with Marmite makes a great alternative. The yeast extract is packed with B vitamins, whose brain-boosting powers have been demonstrated in many studies.

Lunch A smart choice for lunch is an omelette and salad. Eggs are rich in choline, which your body uses to produce the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. Researchers at Boston University found that when healthy young adults were given the drug scopolamine, which blocks acetylcholine receptors in the brain, it significantly reduced their ability to remember word pairs. Low levels of acetylcholine are also associated with Alzheimer's disease, and some studies suggest that boosting dietary intake may slow age-related memory loss.

A salad packed full of antioxidants, including beta-carotene and vitamins C and E, should also help keep an ageing brain in tip-top condition by helping to mop up damaging free radicals. Dwight Tapp and colleagues from the University of California at Irvine found that a diet high in antioxidants improved the cognitive skills of 39 ageing beagles - proving that you can teach an old dog new tricks.

Round off lunch with a yogurt dessert, and you should be alert and ready to face the stresses of the afternoon. That's because yogurt contains the amino acid tyrosine, needed for the production of the neurotransmitters dopamine and noradrenalin, among others. Studies by the US military indicate that tyrosine becomes depleted when we are under stress and that supplementing your intake can improve alertness and memory.

Snack Don't forget to snaffle a snack mid-afternoon, to maintain your glucose levels. Just make sure you avoid junk food, and especially highly processed goodies such as cakes, pastries and biscuits, which contain trans-fatty acids. These not only pile on the pounds, but are implicated in a slew of serious mental disorders, from dyslexia and ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) to autism. Hard evidence for this is still thin on the ground, but last year researchers at the annual Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego, California, reported that rats and mice raised on the rodent equivalent of junk food struggled to find their way around a maze and took longer to remember solutions to problems they had already solved. It seems that some of the damage may be mediated through triglycerides, a cholesterol-like substance found at high levels in rodents fed on trans-fats. When the researchers gave these rats a drug to bring triglyceride levels down again, the animals' performance on the memory tasks improved.

Dinner Brains are around 60 per cent fat, so if trans-fats clog up the system, what should you eat to keep it well oiled? Evidence is mounting in favour of omega-3 fatty acids, in particular docosahexaenoic acid or DHA. In other words, your granny was right: fish is the best brain food. Not only will it feed and lubricate a developing brain, DHA also seems to help stave off dementia. Studies published last year reveal that older mice from a strain genetically altered to develop Alzheimer's had 70 per cent less of the amyloid plaques associated with the disease when fed a high-DHA diet. Finally, you could do worse than finish off your evening meal with strawberries and blueberries. Rats fed on these fruits have shown improved coordination, concentration and short-term memory. And even if they don't work such wonders in people, they still taste fantastic. So what have you got to lose? Believe it or not, your brain rusts as you get older. The end result is Alzheimers, or as one of our patients called it, old timers disease." But thankfully, nature has provided the perfect WD-40 lubricant. It is the rainbow of colorful fruits and vegetables the dark purples of blueberries, the deep reds of pomegranates, the rich green of kale and collards, the bright orange of sweet potatoes. All these colorful foods provide powerful antioxidants. Thats a good thing; because, as a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found, people who ate more dietary antioxidants had 70% less Alzheimers and dementia. This is one powerful way to control one of the major causes of all disease rusting or oxidative stress. Eat 8 10 servings (1/2 cup = 1 serving) of these lifesaving colorful fruits and vegetables a day to protect your brain.

9. Chill Out
Dr. Robert Sapolsky, a renowned Stanford neurobiologist, explained the dangers of stress in his book Why Zebras Dont Get Ulcers. The zebras are busy eating grass until a lion starts chasing them. Then they go crazy, running all over the place, until the lion kills a zebra. Then all the other zebras relax and go back to grazing while the lion eats his dinner right next to them. The problem with humans is we dont discharge our stress by running like crazy or relaxing after a stressful event. We just sit and stew in our stress juices. One of these juices is a hormone called cortisol. Unfortunately, besides causing or contributing to over 95% of all illness, chronic exposure to cortisol shrinks your brain. Dr. Sapolsky has shown that cortisol damages brain cells in the hippocampus - one of our memory centers. We cant avoid stress, so we must learn to discharge its effects every day. Use iMusic ZenMeditate and zen out, go to a yoga class, learn tai chi, get a massage, make love, go for a jog, play with your children, take a walk in the woods, watch a sunset, but whatever you do, dont just stew in your stress juices!

10. Sleep On It
SKIMPING on sleep does awful things to your brain. Planning, problem-solving, learning, concentration, working memory and alertness all take a hit. IQ scores tumble. "If you have been awake for 21 hours straight, your abilities are equivalent to someone who is legally drunk," says Sean Drummond from the University of California, San Diego. And you don't need to pull an all-nighter to suffer the effects: two or three late nights and early mornings on the trot have the same effect. Luckily, it's reversible - and more. If you let someone who isn't sleep-deprived have an extra hour or two of shut-eye, they perform much better than normal on tasks requiring sustained attention, such as taking an exam. And being able to concentrate harder has knock-on benefits for overall mental performance. "Attention is the base of a mental pyramid," says Drummond. "If you boost that, you can't help boosting everything above it." These are not the only benefits of a decent night's sleep. Sleep is when your brain processes new memories, practices and hones new skills - and even solves problems. Say you're trying to master a new video game. Instead of grinding away into the small hours, you would be better off playing for a couple of hours, then going to bed. While you are asleep your brain will reactivate the circuits it was using as you learned the game, rehearse them, and then shunt the new memories into long-term storage. When you wake up, hey presto! You will be a better player. The same applies to other skills such as playing the piano, driving a car and, some researchers claim, memorizing facts and figures. Even taking a nap after training can help, says Carlyle Smith of Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario.

There is also some evidence that sleep can help produce moments of problem-solving insight. The famous story about the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev suddenly "getting" the periodic table in a dream after a day spent struggling with the problem is probably true. It seems that sleep somehow allows the brain to juggle new memories to produce flashes of creative insight. So if you want to have a eureka moment, stop racking your brains and get your head down on the pillow. Over time the stress of sleep deprivation eats away at our brain function. Most of us need more and better sleep. Here are some tips for improved sleep: Use iMusic DeepSleep Suite if you have trouble relaxing and winding down at bed time. Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day and try to get to sleep before midnight . Try to get at least 7-8 hours of sleep a night. If you have trouble falling asleep, try a little sleep ritual Stop your day at least one or two hours before bedtime to wind down. Dont watch TV or check your email. Take a hot bath with Epsom salt and 10 drops of lavender oil and just soak and relax for 20 minutes. Try some supplemental magnesium. Magnesium is the relaxation mineral. up to 300 to 600 mg a day of an absorbable form such as magnesium glycinate.