Keep Your Brain Alive: 83 Neurobic Exercises by Lawrence Katz, Manning Rubin Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Keep Your Brain Alive: 83 Neurobic Exercises
Book Review: What?
Summary: 1 Stars
This book might be the biggest scam ever. Including "increase mental fitness" anywhere in the description of this book should be considered crime. There is NO WAY that by using my left hand to brush my teeth in the morning is going to make my mind more acute, or by going to a farmers market is going to improve my memory. Anyone who thinks this book helps isn't being honest with themselves.Book Review: If You Don't Use - You Loose It!
Summary: 4 Stars
I already knew that as you age and your memory starts to go, it is not too late to regain mental strength. Our brain is like a muscle - if you don't use it, you lose it! This book offers highly effective exercises that help you fight memory loss and bulk up that brain of yours. I really enjoyed the concept of "neurobics", which are simple and fun exercises that stimulate neurons in your brain and incorporate all five of your senses.
I recommend this book to anyone who wants to keep their mental edge - and don't we all want to stay as sharp as a tack? Personally, besides the simple yet repetitive exercises from the book, I use services like Agogus.com, which provide stimulating, varied content to work out your mind. It really does increase my mental fitness - and gives me lots to talk about too.
Book Review: Consider it for the increase in focus
Summary: 3 Stars
I did a google on the concept of neurobics first. It's a concept developed solely by Dr.Katz with no actual physical evidence that it works. All the articles I found were related to the book, not any new research on this theory. In the opening chapters, Katz builds his case for how the brain wastes away in the absence of full sensory usage , how neurobics (could) make a difference and then proceeds to the excercises.
The exercises are diverse,cover a whole lot of brain estate and can be applied for any age group. I appreciated how they could be seemlessly integrated into the course of the day and week across varous activities. Except for the initial awkwardness , you need not spend any additional time doing them.
I applied some of the exercises and have noticed an immediate benefit in focus on habitual tasks. For eg. I used to bathe in a hurry and leave for office. Bathe so absentmindely that I'd wonder sometimes whether I washed properly later on when my mind caught up. Concentrating didnt help. Katz suggests breaking such habitual activities by using your less dominant hand rather than the usual one. It has made a great difference to me. This and other exercises do bring focus and awaken dormant senses while doing tasks.
The claim of long term memory growth is a moot point and one I'm not convinced on yet. Involving additional senses to remember stuff reads good in print, but not too practical in real life. I still can't remember a good joke to save my life.
But I sure am benefitting with other exercises. Here's one that I came up with. I have a habit of absently reaching in the fridge for a bottle of coke whenever I sit down with a book. I've switched the hand for opening and reaching in the fridge. Now each time I reach for an item, I pause and consider twice before taking it. You heard it here first!
Book Review: Decent start for exercising the brain.
Summary: 4 Stars
I am actually 30 years old, and the book says it caters to 40+, but I find it a great start to opening neural pathways by seemingly simple exercises.Book Review: Accessible, intriguing, and fun!
Summary: 5 Stars
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!