Instead, what I found to my disappointment, were trivial exercises that aim to change routine habits. Most of it is about deliberately changing the way we perfrom our routines and mundane daily activities - like closing your eyes and opening your bathroom tap, taking a new route to a familiar destination, getting exposed to strong and unusual smells etc. This might be of help to those who have considerably aged and require any sort of mental stimulation to activate their brain cells. For someone like me, working as a bank clerk at the age of 30, brimming with ideas on creativity and imagination techniques, these exercises really do not make much of a difference.
I think what the younger population needs for brain development (not in the physiological sense) is a solid exposure to the different ways of thinking - analytical, logical, creative, lateral, absrtact, visual, holistic, intuitive, pattern-based thinking etc and ways to improve memory. The more tools you have to choose from the more ways you have to tackle and solve a problem. This book doesn't do a thing towards this objective.
If you feel what I mentioned in the last paragraph is what you're really looking for, I would whole-heartedly suggest Karl Albrecht's "Brain Power". That book really deserves to move up in the sales ranking. ("Brain Power" focuses on thinking methods. For memory improvement the only book you need to read, in my opinion, is "Your Memory" by Kenneth Higbee).
What follows might be an unkind comment, but I should mention it because the title does not suggest it, "Save this title for the time when you are old and senile".
Reviewed by Nancy Newman whose novel "Disturbing The Peace" is to be published by Avon Books this fall
If you've been suffering periodic memory lapses lately and are worried a your middle-aged brain is turning to mush, take heart. Help is here in the form of a terrific little book called Keep Your Brain Alive by Lawrence C. Katz,Ph.D. and Manning Rubin. Based on the latest scientific research from around the world, the book offers a short explanation of how the brain functions, then goes on to describe a unique program called neurobics (aerobics for the brain) which can keep your mind healthy and agile even as you and your brain age
The balance of science and exercises is organized and written in a way that let's you understand enough about what's happening in the brain without bogging you down with technical explanations. Basically the system uses the brain's ability to produce it's own nutrients that strengthen and preserve brain cells and applies that to the discovery that nerve cells in adult brains can be stimulated to grow dendrites with these nutrients. As we age our lives tend to become so routinized that we rely too heavily on only one or two senses and many pathways in the brain's circuits become inactive. As a result there is a thinning out of dendrites. Since these threadlike tendrils receive and process information from nerve cell to nerve cell, our minds can begin to feel sluggish.
But according to the authors, this situation can be vastly improved by presenting the brain with unexpected combinations of the senses in novel ways, thereby stimulating it to increase the health and complexity of its dendrites and thus giving memory and mental agility a boost.
The eighty-three exercises offered in the book are simple, fun and easy to integrate into daily life. Try brushing your teeth or buttoning your shirt in the morning with your less dominant hand. Scramble the location of familiar objects in your office. Take a whiff of pungent spices at an ethnic market. Make your way through your bedroom without turning on a light. You're giving your neural pathways a workout. Soon you'll be thinking up your own neurobic exercises. Growing older doesn't have to mean growing dimmer, say Katz and Rubin, not if you start living neurobically.