To keep your brain sharp as you age, learn several new skills at once! Dr. Rachel Wu is a psychology professor at UC Riverside, who says learning multiple things simultaneously activates more areas of the brain than when you learn one thing at a time. For this study, Dr. Wu recruited older adults with an average age of 68.
Study participants were asked to learn 3 new skills simultaneously over the length of a college semester, taking classes in Spanish, photography, painting, computers or music composition.
The result: At every follow-up assessment, cognitive scores were at least 3 times higher than before classes started!
Personally, I love this tactic for learning and I practice it every day. There is an enormous rush of Serotonin that comes from mastering even small skills.
