How to stop aging of your brain

The other day, I visited old people at care home with my family.   The reason I go with my family was because I knew the older people look happier to see my wife and kids.  And I like to see their smiles .

Their smiles especially towards kids are compassionate and beautiful beyond description. I was actually nothing as compared to my kids at care homes.   They usually don't make questions to me unless I ask, but they ask more questions to kids.   They ask , "How old are you?" "What's your name?" "What grade?" "Who is your teacher?" "Do you like school?" and so on.   My older boy is actually old enough that he doesn't like this kind of questions but I'm glad he showed his smiles, too.   On the other hand, my daughter looked purely so happy to see their smiles.   I thanked my children for visiting them with me and I asked them to visit another care home next time.   I explained them "your smiles" can make everybody happy.

Speaking of the elderly, I am now reading the book about how to prevent senility of brain by Dr. Ryuta Kawashima. This was very interesting. 

Dr. Kawahima was originally studying brain for the purpose of educating children such as what would make their brains developing.   And he paid attention to the prefrontal area of brain which commands thinking, memory, learning, desire, attention and controlling of emotion. Dr. Kawashima and his team tested various activities through MRI and found out simple activities of reading, writing and calculation make the prefrontal area of brain activated more.

According to Dr. Kawashima, this was actually unbelievable results since they originally thought something difficult would make brain activated. And they were very careful about the differences of what is developing and what is activating.   Because children is always developing each day, they knew it was difficult to continue to study child's brain.   So they started to study aged people who are about to be Alzheimer disease.

Thus they happened to find the ways to stop aging of brain (or to reduce the speed of aging brain to be exact.)  I think I should explain this more but the simple answers are;

1) Reading book (or sentences)aloud

2) Simple Calculations

3) Cooking

4) Playing music instrument

5) Conversations

Interestingly, reading book aloud is much more better for brain than just reading book silently.  I thought this may be a secret of priest's long life since they always chant sutras aloud.