Richard Restak, author of "Think Smart: A Neuroscientist's Prescription for Improving Your Brain's Performance", says the key to maintaining a healthy brain is to exercise the 3 different types of memory. Long-term memory can be exercised by remembering a particular year and associating as much as possible with it. Sensory memory can be exercised by testing your sense of smell with your eyes closed. The working memory - the ability to keep several things in mind simultaneously - can be exercised by playing video games or by naming U.S. presidents in different orders. Basically, our memories need "brainercising".

Wandering minds can activate the brain's problem-solving network. In a study done at the University of British Columbia, participants were placed inside an MRI scanner, where they were to press a button when numbers appeared on a screen. Attentiveness was tracked by brain scans, participants' subjective reports and task performance. The more the participants' minds wandered, the more activity there was in the network that handles routine mental activity and the network that handles complex problem solving. This is an especially important finding because previous studies have shown daydreaming can occupy as much as one-third of our waking lives.

Scientists from Belgium and the UK discovered a gene that enables brains to be more active as they tire. After 24 volunteers stayed up all night, they were put in a brain scanner to perform simple memory tests. The volunteers with genetically short PER3 genes did much better on the tests. The scanner showed that the short PER3 gene recruited extra brain structure to help with the tests. Volunteers with genetically long PER3 genes had less brain activity - even in brain structure normally used for such tests. When handling sleep deprivation, PER3 is the long and short of it.

Neurotheology is the study of what happens in the brains of people who believe they connect with the divine. Researchers have found that the brains of people who pray or meditate more than an hour daily are different. Brain scans have shown that frontal lobes - which handle attention - are active; but the parietal lobes - which integrate sensory input - aren't. This causes a decreased sense of self and an increased sense of oneness. The more you focus on something, the more it is written in the brain's neural connections and the more it becomes your reality. At least researchers are praying that's what happens.