Mental Exercise for a Buff Brain :

In the past couple of decades, interest in exercise, working out and keeping physically fit in the U.S. has gradually grown almost as much as the average American's waistline. Back in the '60s, you might have been hard-pressed to ferret out a gym or two outside of major cities, but now they're nearly as common as the fast-food restaurants that contribute to their bottom lines.

But while we're all so uber-concerned about strengthening our bodies, are we neglecting our minds? Could we perhaps benefit from mental exercise as well as physical, and could the benefits help us maintain greater mental agility as we age? A study published recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that this is probably the case. The study followed 2,802 people with an average age of 73. These subjects were divided into four groups. One was a control group that was not put through any of the exercises. The other three were put through 10 sessions of training. One group focused on exercises that were designed to challenge memory, another on reasoning ability and a third group worked on mental processing speed. The sessions lasted 60 to 75 minutes, and they became progressively more difficult.

When the subjects were tested five years later, the results were astounding. Those who had worked on their reasoning abilities scored 40 percent better than the control group. Those who had trained on memory scored 75 percent better. Those who worked on processing speed scored an astonishing 300 percent better. Keep in mind that the test subjects only received a total of perhaps 12 hours of training and none at all after that -- yet their mental muscles, so to speak, retained their newly developed strength five years later.

The key seems to be to challenge your brain with new tasks that it isn't used to. Researchers believe that such challenges can not only keep healthy brains sharp through middle and old age, but also can actually slow the mental decline of those stricken with diseases such as Alzhiemer's or dementia.

Working at various sorts of logic puzzles is one way of strengthening your reasoning abilities. Try the ones we've compiled below and start yourself on the path to having a buff brain. Answers are at the end of the column.

1. Once there was a blind beggar whose brother had died. What relation was the blind beggar to the dead brother? "Brother" is NOT the correct answer.

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