Mental ‘Workouts’ Could Keep Your Brain Young

Short Wave

NPR

News, Life Sciences, Daily News, Astronomy, Nature, Science

4.7 • 6.5K Ratings

🗓️ 17 November 2025

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Scientists have found the first compelling evidence that cognitive training can boost levels of a brain chemical that typically declines as people age. The results of this 10-week study back earlier animal research showing that environments that stimulate the brain can increase levels of certain neurotransmitters. And other studies of people have suggested that cognitive training can improve thinking and memory. So how does it all work? And by how much does it all work? Here to break everything down and help you understand how to keep your brain sharp is NPR science correspondent Jon Hamilton.

To try out the cognitive exercises for yourself, visit Brain HQ.

Interested in more brain science? Email us your question at shortwave@npr.org.

Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.

See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.

NPR Privacy Policy

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:05.2	Hey, shortwavers.
0:06.9	Here's some advice for all you fitness fanatics.
0:10.1	Never skip brain day.
0:12.2	That's right.
0:12.9	It's time to talk about improving your cognitive fitness.
0:16.0	And here to lead today's master class is NPR's resident brain trainer, John Hamilton.
0:20.7	Hey, John. Hey, Gina.
0:22.6	Just finishing up my prefrontal reps here. Got to keep the old cortex shredded.
0:27.9	All right. Let me add that to the list of images I can't unsee. Okay, John. So what's cognitive
0:33.3	fitness exactly? Like, are we talking wordle? You know, because I'm pretty good at Wardle. Nope. Fine.
0:39.9	What about quadratic
0:41.5	equations? Numbers.
0:43.3	Nope.
0:44.5	What about like a few races in Mario Kart? Maybe those
0:47.4	Zelda puzzles that I do?
0:49.2	Strike three. Those all
0:51.3	focused on really narrow skills.
0:53.6	You know, word recognition, number processing, throwing a turtle shell.
0:58.1	Cognitive fitness is more of a whole brain workout.
1:01.2	You're trying to build up these broad areas like working memory, processing speed, focus.
1:06.0	By the way, those are functions that tend to get worse as we age.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.