Blow your own mind

If you want your brain to stay sharp, you have to work it. "I write complex code every day of the week. That's all the brain exercise I need." you say. But you're wrong. If you want to keep your brain alive, you have to do things your brain doesn't expect. The cortex forms new patterns... new synaptic connections in response to novel activity, and PET scans show that far fewer pathways are activated when the brain processes a routine task... even a complex one.

Imagine playing an electric guitar, for example, but hearing a saxaphone. That's what you get with a synth guitar (click on the video button to see and hear the guitar player). At the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, the Sam Bush band was playing a vintage rock song, complete with a vintage rock organ. But... no keyboard player. Then I realized it was one of the guitar players, on a synth guitar.

The cognitive disconnect between watching someone play the guitar but hearing an absolutely real smokey sax is... mind blowing. (FYI musicians, Roland and others have done a LOT of work on the latency, and the latest generations of guitar synth/midi pickups is pretty damn good now.) Apparently playing a synth guitar is even stranger than watching/hearing someone else. I play a midi keyboard, so this shouldn't have been so surprising, but we expect keyboard synthesizers, so watching someone play a piano that sounds like a violin doesn't tweak neurons the same way anymore.

So what else can you do? The point is to do something different.

If you're into extreme sports, try a meditation retreat.

If you're someone who is not deaf, you might try attending a silent weekend, a total immersion "sign language jam" intended to give non-deaf people a brain-changing (and some say life-changing) experience. I've had friends attend one of these (they hold them in lots of different places) after taking some sign-language classes just for the unique experience--not because they needed to learn sign-language. They said it's extremely challenging... and very, very rewarding.

Or try Dark Dining, by visiting a restaurant virtually blind. They're popping up everywhere--London, Germany, Australia, and Switzerland, and Paris (google on "dining in the dark").

Or let's say you already tend toward being the quiet, chess-is-my-sport type. Then maybe you need something adventurous like, say, trek through Patagonia.

But you don't need to wait for some Big New Event to make your brian happy. It's more important to try to incorporate brain workouts into your everyday life. There's a fantastic book on all this by Lawrence C Katz, called Keep Your Brain Alive, be sure to check out this page on "neurobic exercises". But here are a few simple exercises from the book that you could do right now:

Turn your world upside down
"Turn pictures of your family, your deskclock, or an illustrated calendar upside down. Your brain is quite literally of two minds when it comes to processing visual information. The analytical "verbal" part of your brain (sometimes called "the left brain") tries to label on object after just a brief glance: "table", "chair", "child". The "right brain", in contrast, perceives spatial realtionships and uses nonverbal cues. When you look at a familiar picture right side up, your left brain quickly labels it an diverts your attention to other things. When the picture is upside down, the quick labeling strategy doesn't work--and your right-brain networks kick in, trying to interpret the shapes, colrs, and relationships of a puzzling picture."

See things in a new light
"Place different-color geletain filters over your desk lamp. Colors evoke strong emotional associations that can create completely different feelings about ordinary objects and events. In addition, the occasionally odd effects of color (a purple styrofoam coffee cup) jars your brain's expectations and lights up more blips on your attentional "radar screen."

But the book has more than 80 others -- including some more ambitious activities to help blow your own mind. I tend to think that I'm doing a good job on this because I have a good mix of activities... programming, skateboarding, writing, reading weird science, skiing. But then I realized, these things aren't unique for me... they don't blow my mind (except for the weird science stuff). I've been doing them for a long time, so they don't tweak my brain. There's a lot of good stuff there, but no Whoa/WTF experience. I need to keep incorporating new things at every scale--from big macro things like adventure vacations to where I keep my paper clips.

So what are you doing to blow your own mind on a regular basis?