Train Your Brain

I read an interesting blog post a couple weeks ago that touched on the subject of neural plasticity. Neural plasticity means that our brains are shaped by our experienced and by how we actually use our brains. The blog referenced a study in which MRI's were taken of the brains of London taxi drivers and were compared with images of other people. Researchers discovered that the hippocampus of the taxi drivers' brains were larger than those of other people. The hippocampus is a part of the brain that controls spatial memory, and since taxi drivers need to remember routes to so many different locations, their activity of driving a taxi had actually changed the morphology of their brains. So basically, these drivers had trained their brains into being able to meet the demands of their job.

Reading this made me wonder what my brain might look like. Recently, I have been feeling mentally sluggish at best, especially since I have been home for the summer. I really do believe that I have been getting dumber. For example, when I was a little younger, I used to be able to zero in and focus on what I was doing without getting distracted. If I were doing a specific task, I probably wouldn't even hear someone at first if they tried to get my attention. Nowadays, though, I have trouble focusing on anything for more than about 20 seconds at a time. I'm worse than a typical Jr. High student. I constantly find myself just staring off into space, thinking about nothing in particular, even when I have a task to be doing.

Even just today, I spent the day writing funeral sermons that I can use in the future, so that I already have them on hand when I need them and won't have to write a new one. I spent all afternoon working on this sermon, and at the end of the day, I could look at it and think, "Wow, this isn't very good at all." And it really isn't. It took forever and a day to write, and it's kind of lousy. It's as though I was more focused, sharper, and more creative four years ago than I am now.

I imagine that I have probably let my brain get flabby. I haven't been practicing very good discipline lately. I get home from the church and just loaf around the house for the most part. The result? I'm less productive, I write fewer blog posts (and even fewer good ones), and my brain turns to a sloppy mess. And, just as it's hard to get back into physical shape after you've let yourself go, it's tough work to get back into mental shape. It means I need to be on facebook and youtube less, in my books more, and engaging with others more. So I'll be working on that, and in the meantime, I ask that you forgive me for being an idiot.