Fit Brains: All About New Ideas

Thanks to Jill Fallon of The Business of Life for alerting me to 10 Valuable Life Lessons. . . Learned from Coffins, just in time for Halloween. A later post, Six Ways to Carry Trash, got my attention, too. American Inventors Spot is all about invention, innovation, and new ideas.

Research on healthy brains has shown again and again that learning what is new to us is good for us. That includes looking at old ideas in new ways. By making the effort to push the edge of our learning beyond our comfort zones, we also create new neural connections and pathways. This is what neuroscientists call "cogntive reserve" or "brain reserves." We're building extra thinking capacity, a kind of mental savings account to use in the future as need.