How God Changes Your Brain - Andrew Newberg, M. D_ [74]
Laughing, however, stimulates different neural paths.15 Laughing and humor did not make it onto our list because part of the mechanisms involved are associated with surprise and the perception of incongruity.16 Laughter and humor can stimulate the amygdala, suggesting that these feelings are sometimes related to discomfort and fear.17 This helps explain why many people laugh when watching videos where others do foolish things and are hurt, for it may be a way of quickly releasing anxiety (an alternative explanation would be that some people experience an inherent sadistic pleasure when others make mistakes).
There is some evidence to suggest that laughter may help lower stress and boost the immune system, even turning on various genes that are related to fighting cancer, diabetes, and AIDS.18 But the changes appear to be temporary, and the studies fail to demonstrate if any appreciable improvements in health are gained.
Nurturing a laughing personality may be beneficial, but until someone takes a group of test subjects and asks them to arbitrarily laugh for fifteen minutes per day, then scans them again in eight weeks, we won't know if the neural circuits stimulated are related to anxiety, pleasure, sadism, or peace.
However, we do recommend that you listen to “happy” music (yes, your brain organizes sound into a range of emotions). It can stimulate a smile response and improve your mood,19 and it is particularly effective in helping your brain when you are dealing with a chronic or serious disease.20
THE SEVENTH BEST WAY TO EXERCISE YOUR BRAIN
Stay intellectually active. This should be (if you will pardon the pun) a no-brainer. When it comes to the dendrites and axons that connect one neuron to thousands of others, if you don't use it, you will lose it.21 Intellectual and cognitive stimulation strengthens the neural connections throughout your frontal lobe,22 and this, in turn, improves your ability to communicate, solve problems, and make rational decisions concerning your behavior. Nearly every age-related cognitive disability is related to the functioning of your frontal lobe, so it's particularly important to exercise this specific part of your cortex, which, by the way, has more neural interconnections than any other lobe. A highly functioning frontal lobe also makes it easier to diet, exercise, and avoid tempting activities that have health risks.23
Memory and mnemonic exercises, strategy-based games like chess or mahjong, and other forms of visual/spatial exercises or games can significantly improve cognitive functioning, especially in older adults.24 And the more intense and frequent the game playing, the greater the cognitive gain. Furthermore, intellectual stimulation, in nearly any form, lowers your propensity to react with anger or fear. Imagination even improves the motor coordination of your body, and if you rehearse a dance step or a golf swing in your mind, you'll actually perform the task better. The same is true for attaining personal goals. The more often you imagine what you want, the more likely you are to achieve it.
Try to spend as many hours a day engaged in the most intellectually challenging activities you can dream up, and solve as many complex problems as quickly as you can, because speedy intellectual reasoning helps you maintain a healthy brain.25 Read books (fiction or nonfiction, it doesn't matter) or listen to books on tape. Watch the education and science channels on TV, take a class, attend a lecture, go to a museum, play chess, or write in your diary. However, doing math exercises and crossword puzzles apparently doesn't help,26 and performance pressure