No more punch lines that just slipped away. No more names on the tip of your tongue. No more senior moments! Drawing on cutting-edge neurological research, how to keep your brain alive: 83 neurobic exercises brings help to everyone whose memory is starting to slip. Devised by Dr. Lawrence Katz, a professor of neurobiology at Duke University Medical Center, and Manning Rubin, author of 60 Ways to Relieve Stress in 60 Seconds, here is a regimen of mental cross-training that can be done anywhere, by anyone, at any time of day. The premise is simple: When you exercise the brain, you release natural growth factors called neurotrophins, which in turn enhance the brain's level of fitness. And nothing so easily stimulates the brain as breaking routines and using the five senses in new and unexpected ways. So if you're right-handed, wake up tomorrow and brush your teeth with your left hand. Or close your eyes before you get into the car and then get the key into the ignition. Every time you open a new circuit in your brain, it's like doing a round of mental sit-ups, without the pain.

68,000 copies in print.

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.

91 of 95 found the following review helpful:


Simple: It Delivers What It Promises  Jan 06, 2004 By Julie Jordan Scott "Writer, Life Coach - Owner - www.passionactivator.com"
"Keep Your Brain Alive" offers simple, easy-to-maneuver exercises for ones brain. It is not rocket science nor do I believe it was written to prepare people for raising their bar on the genius scale.

What it CAN do is keep your saw sharpened as many people go on the decline... not as one reviewer suggested, when people are already senile.

I also appreciated the teachings in regards to growing new dendrites-the connective links which work as memory sharpeners - by taking simple actions like shaking up your breakfast menu using a multisensory approach to menu planning.

My children, ages 11 and 5, enjoyed doing some of the associative games which will also build dendrites.

Again, intentionally using these techniques and others in the book will do exactly as this book is intended: keep the mind fit... not create genius in 10 days or less.

112 of 119 found the following review helpful:


Rip  Feb 14, 2007 By Scrutinizing Consumer
I'm very disappointed with this book. While it's based on fundamentally solid brain science, there's not enough meat in here to justify an entire book.

This book offers the following to strengthen your brain (i.e. build and activate new neural connections): "1. Involve one or more of your senses in a novel (new) context, 2. Break a routine activity in an unexpected, nontrivial way." Basically, by breaking the routine and forcing yourself to learn new things or different ways of doing old things, new connections will develop within your brain and create thought processing and longevity benefits. If you're right-handed, start forcing yourself to use your left hand (I was taught this aspect almost 30 years ago). Take different routes to work. Start using other senses to take in data. You see a widget. You normally recognize it as such and move on. Here, it is suggested to pick it up, feel it, examine it, smell it, listen to it and more connections will develop. Go out and socialize. Nothing challenges the mind more than interacting with new people.

O.K. This is all good, valuable information. But the proceeding paragraph pretty much sums it up. The other 100 or so pages in this book are fluff, with examples of achieving novelty. [...].


66 of 68 found the following review helpful:


Accessible, intriguing, and fun!  Jul 03, 2005 By Sharon K. Cooper
This book was published in 1999. Now six years later, the baby boomers are moving beyond middle age into their 60's! There is no way that anyone working as a professor in Neurobiology at Duke University Medical Center could get away with selling a book founded on fluff. Katz has structured a daily self responsible system which transposes complex principles of brain development into an accessible experiential application for the general public. He has provided a great service in an age where Alzheimers is indeed a threat to aging. His daily guides *do* work and they do stimulate the parts of the brain and neurosensors to which Katz refers. My husband and I have had a great deal of fun with this book. We're both active and (for right now) healthy and happy baby boomers. Writing with the non dominant hand one day this week as directed in the book, was challenging. I realized the great strength of the large motor muscles in my left hand from playing the piano professionally. The primary challenge was staying with the writing long enough to move through the frustrations of not being able to write well. I became increasingly aware of the astute vulnerable weakness of the small motor muscle control in my left hand and wanted to give up but didn't. As adults, we are usually rigid when it comes to revealing our vulnerabilities. This book challenges adults to penetrate their comfort zones and not wait until there is a stroke or some other debilitating condition which leaves a person without eyesight, hearing, the use of a sense or a particular area of the brain. Katz challenges the adult to minimize the two dominant senses, the visual and auditory, in his daily neurobic assignments. He makes it clear how the less used senses in modern times have been blunted in the modern technological societies. Katz renders an expansive and interesting history of how the ancient (such as the Polynesian sailors) used the senses in ways that we no longer do. Their olfactory and touch senses kept the brain active. Thus, this assisted them in surviving the wilds of nature. The book is an interesting read and is sure to keep the reader plenty busy re-charging the electrical passageways of the wonderful gift with which we are all born, the human brain. As a person who has lived with a congenital hearing loss, I have long been acquainted with sense adaptability. Hats off to Katz for an accessible, intriguing, and fun book!

37 of 38 found the following review helpful:


A very helpful book  Aug 24, 1999
What I liked about this book and its system of neurobics is that i can strengthen my brain by doing such seemingly ordinary things as taking a different route to work. It's completely unintimidating...even fun. I wish I could find a diet system that was as simple as this seems to be. I have checked out the science and think this neurobic technique can do for my mind what aerobics is doing for my body.

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