Giving The Brain A Workout

puzzles, from 'memory jogs' to Sudoku to crosswords to number games are all-encompassing, and have been specially formulated to improve each and every part of the brain, from visual-spatial ability to perception, attention, memory, numerical agility, problem-solving and language. B Professor Robertson has been studying the brain for 57 years, in a career dedicated to changing and improving the way it works. During this time there has been a remarkable paradigm shift in the way scientists view the brain, he says. When I first started teaching and researching, a very pessimistic view prevailed that, from the age of three or four, we were continually losing brain cells and that the stocks couldn't be replenished. That has turned out to be factually wrong. Now that we know that the brain is 'plastic' - it changes, adapts and is physically sharpened according to the experiences it has. C Robertson likens our minds to trees in a park with branches spreading out, connecting and intertwining, with connections increasing in direct correlation to usage. He says that the 'eureka' moment in his career - and the reason he devised his 'brain trainer' puzzles - was the realisation that the connections multiply with use and so it is…