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Everyday Improvements You Can Make Right Now to Boost Your Brain Health and Extend Your 'Mindspan'

A 3D rendition of nervous pathways in the brain highlighted in multiple colors.

Parade

“We’re having a brain health revolution,” says Sandra Bond Chapman, PhD, founder of Center for BrainHealth® at the University of Texas at Dallas. “What we’ve known about improving cognitive function has lagged a generation behind what we know about our hearts—until now.” Groundbreaking advances in neuroimaging and brain studies are illuminating that mysterious organ long hidden below hair, scalp and skull. In the past dozen years, more has been revealed about both its hardware and its software than was known in all history, neurologists say. The BrainHealth Project This summer, an ambitious Chapman-led collaboration begins enrolling 120,000 subjects. Researchers at 19 major institutions will use computer-based testing, brain scans and more to suss out how training and lifestyle habits affect cognitive performance over time.

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“It’s the Framingham of the 21st century,” says Leanne Young, Ph.D., executive director of UT-Dallas’ Brain Performance Institute. The Framingham Heart Study has tracked the cardiovascular health of that Massachusetts town since 1948. “Framingham taught us what to do to be heart healthy. Now because of technology we have the ability to gather much more info on brain health, on all demographics, using the latest analytical tools. We literally could not do in the last century what we’re about to do.”
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Sandra Bond Chapman, PhD

Chief Director Dee Wyly Distinguished Professor, School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences Co-Leader, The BrainHealth Project

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