The Real Reason You Can’t Focus (And the 10-Minute Fix That Actually Works)
Introduction: What If Your Brain Was Your Greatest Untapped Asset?
Most of us treat our brains as a given. We rely on them every day to think, remember, feel, and function — and then wonder why we feel foggy, distracted, anxious, or just a bit flat. We reach for coffee. We scroll. We push through. And we assume that’s just how it is.
Wendy Suzuki had a similar awakening, except she was a neuroscientist at New York University. She had a stellar academic career, published research, a full diary — and zero joy. Then she walked into an aerobics class, and slowly, almost by accident, her brain began to change.
Healthy Brain, Happy Life is the story of what happened next. Part memoir, part science primer, part practical toolkit, it’s one of the most accessible and genuinely useful books ever written about the brain. Suzuki doesn’t just tell you the brain can change — she shows you exactly how to change yours, and why that matters for everything from memory and focus to happiness and resilience.
This blog post is your deep dive into the book’s most powerful ideas. We’ve pulled out the core science, the most actionable strategies, and 15 tips you can start using today. Whether you’re a lifelong learner, a peak performer, or just someone who wants to feel better in their own head, this one is for you.
| “The more I learned about the brain, the more I realised it had the capacity to change in ways I had never imagined.”
— Wendy Suzuki |
Who Is Wendy Suzuki?
Wendy Suzuki is a Professor of Neural Science and Psychology at New York University’s Center for Neural Science. She has spent decades studying how the hippocampus — the brain’s memory centre — works, and what happens to it when we expose it to new experiences and challenges.
She’s also a woman who hit a wall. By her early forties, she was professionally successful but personally unfulfilled. She had gained weight, felt isolated, and found herself increasingly unable to enjoy her own life. The irony wasn’t lost on her: she was a world expert in the brain, and yet she hadn’t thought to use that knowledge to improve her own.
That changed when she started exercising regularly. Within months, she noticed tangible differences in her mood, focus, and energy. Intrigued — and a little embarrassed that she hadn’t seen this coming — she began applying her scientific expertise to understand exactly what was happening. The result was a complete reorientation of her research and, eventually, this book.
Healthy Brain, Happy Life was published in 2015 and has since become a go-to resource for anyone wanting to understand the science of brain health in plain English. It’s warm, funny, honest, and incredibly well-researched. It won’t bore you. And it might just change how you think about your own mind.
The Core Science: What’s Actually Going On in Your Brain
Neuroplasticity — The Brain’s Superpower
For most of the 20th century, scientists believed the adult brain was essentially fixed. You were born with a certain number of neurons, and they gradually declined over time. Damage was permanent. The idea that you could meaningfully change your brain as an adult was considered fringe science at best.
We now know that’s completely wrong. Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to change — to form new connections, strengthen existing ones, and even generate new neurons in certain regions. And it continues throughout our entire lives.
This is the foundation of everything Suzuki writes about. The brain isn’t a fixed machine you’re stuck with. It’s a dynamic, responsive organ that adapts based on what you do, think, feel, and experience. That’s extraordinary news, because it means your choices — the ones you make every single day — are literally shaping your brain.
The Hippocampus: Your Memory Engine
The hippocampus sits deep in the brain’s temporal lobe and is responsible for forming, organising, and storing new memories. It’s also one of the primary areas involved in spatial navigation and emotional regulation.
Here’s the remarkable thing: the hippocampus is one of the very few areas of the adult brain where neurogenesis — the birth of brand new neurons — has been confirmed to occur. And crucially, exercise dramatically accelerates this process.
Suzuki’s own research has shown that regular aerobic exercise increases the size of the hippocampus, improving memory function. In one widely cited study, participants who exercised regularly showed a 2% increase in hippocampal volume — which effectively reversed age-related shrinkage by one to two years. That’s not a minor effect. That’s profound.
The Prefrontal Cortex: Your Inner CEO
The prefrontal cortex (PFC) sits at the very front of the brain and is responsible for what scientists call executive function — planning, decision-making, impulse control, attention, and the ability to manage competing priorities. It’s essentially your inner CEO.
The bad news: the PFC is incredibly sensitive to stress, poor sleep, and sedentary living. When it’s under strain, you become more impulsive, less focused, and worse at regulating your emotions. Sound familiar?
The good news: it’s also remarkably responsive to positive interventions. Exercise, mindfulness, sufficient sleep, and novel learning experiences all strengthen the PFC — sometimes quite rapidly.
BDNF: The Fertiliser for Your Brain
Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor, or BDNF, is a protein that supports the survival of existing neurons and encourages the growth of new ones. Suzuki calls it ‘Miracle-Gro for the brain’ — which is a wonderfully accurate image.
BDNF is released in large quantities during aerobic exercise. It promotes learning, sharpens memory, lifts mood, and may even protect against cognitive decline. Low levels of BDNF are associated with depression and neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer’s disease. High levels? Better mood, better memory, better thinking.
The simplest way to boost BDNF? Move your body. Which brings us neatly to Suzuki’s central argument.
| “Exercise is the most transformative thing you can do for your brain today.”
— Wendy Suzuki |
15 Tips and Tricks from Healthy Brain, Happy Life
These aren’t abstract concepts. Each one is grounded in Suzuki’s research and her personal experience of applying neuroscience to everyday life. We’ve included practical examples to help you actually implement them — because knowing something and doing it are very different things.
| TIP #1: Make Aerobic Exercise Non-Negotiable
The single most evidence-backed thing you can do for your brain is get your heart rate up — regularly. Aim for at least 30 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise, three to four times per week. This directly increases BDNF, stimulates hippocampal neurogenesis, and improves prefrontal cortex function. |
How to implement it:
Start smaller than you think necessary. A 20-minute brisk walk counts. The goal initially is consistency, not intensity. Try anchoring it to something you already do — walk to work, take your lunch break outside, do a short run before your morning coffee. Suzuki herself started with just one aerobics class a week. Don’t wait until you feel motivated. The brain boost comes first; the motivation follows.
Example: One of Suzuki’s students reported that after just two weeks of morning jogs, she could focus for longer during lectures and recalled information more accurately during exams. She hadn’t changed anything else. Just the running.
| TIP #2: Try New Physical Activities to Supercharge the Effect
Exercise alone is powerful. But Suzuki’s research suggests that learning a new physical skill on top of regular cardio has a compounding effect on the brain. When you combine aerobic intensity with spatial and motor challenges — like dance, martial arts, or rock climbing — you activate multiple brain regions simultaneously. |
How to implement it:
Don’t just jog the same route. Every few months, try something completely new. Sign up for a dance class. Take a swimming lesson. Have a go at yoga, capoeira, kayaking, or a team sport you’ve never tried. The novelty and the physical challenge working together create a particularly rich environment for neuroplasticity.
Example: Suzuki herself took up a Hawaiian dance class — completely outside her comfort zone. She found that the combination of learning complex choreography and sustaining aerobic effort left her feeling sharper and more energised than any of her standard workouts.
| TIP #3: Use Exercise to Reset Your Emotional State
Feeling anxious, overwhelmed, or just stuck in your own head? Move. Suzuki explains that exercise triggers the release of serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine — the same neurotransmitters targeted by antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication. But exercise works faster and has zero side effects. |
How to implement it:
When you’re in a low mood or feeling stressed, resist the urge to sit with it passively. Even a 10-minute walk around the block will shift your neurochemistry. Build this habit deliberately: when you notice your mood dipping, treat movement as your first port of call rather than your last resort.
Example: Suzuki describes using a short walk before important meetings as a personal ritual. Not to rehearse what she was going to say, but to arrive in the room with a calmer, more focused nervous system. She found her thinking was clearer and her communication more effective as a result.
| TIP #4: Harness the Power of Meditation — Even Just 12 Minutes a Day
Suzuki is a convert to mindfulness meditation, and the neuroscience backs her up. Regular meditation strengthens the prefrontal cortex, reduces activity in the default mode network (the part of your brain associated with mind-wandering and rumination), and physically changes the structure of the brain over time. |
How to implement it:
You don’t need to sit cross-legged for an hour. Research published in Psychological Science found that as little as 12 minutes of focused meditation per day for just two weeks measurably improved working memory capacity and focus. Start with five minutes of breath-focused attention using an app like Headspace or Insight Timer. Build gradually from there. Consistency matters far more than duration.
Example: A study Suzuki cites in the book found that Navy SEAL recruits who completed a mindfulness training programme showed significantly better performance under stress than those who didn’t. If it works for special forces, it’ll work for you.
| TIP #5: Protect Your Sleep Like It’s Your Most Valuable Asset — Because It Is
Sleep is when your brain consolidates memories, flushes out toxic waste products (including proteins linked to Alzheimer’s), and restores your emotional regulation capacity. Chronic sleep deprivation — even mild, chronic short-sleeping — measurably shrinks the hippocampus and impairs the prefrontal cortex. |
How to implement it:
Treat sleep as a performance tool, not a luxury. Set a consistent bedtime and wake time, including at weekends. Avoid screens for at least 30 minutes before bed. Keep your bedroom cool and dark. Avoid alcohol close to bedtime — it disrupts deep sleep stages even if it feels like it helps you nod off. If you struggle with sleep, exercise during the day is one of the most evidence-backed interventions available.
Example: Suzuki describes a period when she was sleeping five to six hours a night and wondering why her memory and mood were suffering. When she began prioritising seven to eight hours consistently, the improvement was noticeable within days. Her students report similar experiences during exam periods — those who sleep less don’t just perform worse; they retain less of what they studied.
| TIP #6: Challenge Your Brain with Active, Effortful Learning
Passive consumption — watching, scrolling, listening without engagement — does almost nothing for your brain. What creates genuine neuroplasticity is effortful learning: struggling with something new, making mistakes, and persisting. This is what Suzuki calls ‘active engagement’. |
How to implement it:
Pick something genuinely difficult to learn. A new language, a musical instrument, a coding language, a craft, a complex game. The key is that it should feel hard — that’s the sign your brain is working. Avoid passive repetition and lean into active recall: instead of re-reading notes, close the book and try to explain the concept from memory. Struggle is not a sign you’re doing it wrong; it’s a sign you’re doing it right.
Example: Suzuki started learning to play piano in her forties. The frustration was real — but so was the effect. She noticed improvements in her spatial reasoning and her ability to hold multiple ideas in working memory simultaneously. The challenge was the point.
| TIP #7: Cultivate Rich Social Connections
Loneliness isn’t just emotionally painful — it’s physiologically harmful. Chronic loneliness elevates cortisol (your stress hormone), which is toxic to the hippocampus over time. Strong social connections, on the other hand, buffer against stress and are one of the most consistent predictors of cognitive health into old age. |
How to implement it:
Prioritise depth over breadth. You don’t need hundreds of friends — you need a handful of people you can be genuinely honest with. Invest in those relationships deliberately. Have real conversations. Share meals. Call people rather than texting. Join clubs, teams, or groups where you’ll meet people around shared interests. Even small social interactions — chatting to a neighbour, having a proper conversation with a colleague — have measurable positive effects on mood and cognitive function.
Example: Suzuki noticed that after her life became dominated by work and isolation, her cognitive performance actually declined despite her fitness improvements. When she deliberately rebuilt her social life, the combination created a step-change in her energy and sharpness.
| TIP #8: Write Down Your Memories to Strengthen Them
Memory isn’t a recording. It’s a reconstruction — and reconstructions can be strengthened or weakened depending on what you do with them. One of Suzuki’s favourite techniques is memory journalling: writing down specific sensory details of experiences you want to remember and reflect on. |
How to implement it:
Keep a simple journal and aim to write a few lines each evening. Don’t just record what happened — capture what you saw, heard, smelled, and felt. The more sensory detail you include, the richer the memory trace becomes. This is called ‘elaborative encoding’ and it makes memories more durable and more accessible.
Example: Suzuki describes a practice she started after a pivotal trip to the Amazon. She wrote detailed sensory descriptions of each day. Years later, those memories are vivid and complete, while equally significant experiences she didn’t journal have faded considerably. The act of writing did the work.
| TIP #9: Use Novelty as Brain Fuel
Your brain pays attention to what is new and unexpected. Novelty activates the dopamine system, drives curiosity, and signals to your brain that something worth remembering is happening. A life of routines is comfortable — but it doesn’t give your brain much to work with. |
How to implement it:
Deliberately inject novelty into your week. Take a different route to work. Try a restaurant serving food from a cuisine you’ve never eaten. Rearrange your workspace. Read outside your usual genre. Say yes to social invitations you’d normally decline. None of this needs to be dramatic — small doses of the unfamiliar are enough to keep the brain alert and engaged.
Example: Suzuki introduced a ‘novelty challenge’ in one of her university classes — each week, students had to do one thing they’d never done before and report back. The exercise became one of the most popular parts of the course, and students consistently reported feeling more alert, curious, and engaged throughout the week it happened.
| TIP #10: Manage Chronic Stress Before It Manages You
Short-term stress is survivable — and even useful. It sharpens focus and mobilises energy. But chronic stress floods your brain with cortisol, which is directly neurotoxic to the hippocampus. Long-term, it shrinks the hippocampus, impairs memory, and increases your risk of anxiety and depression. |
How to implement it:
Identify your primary stress triggers and start building deliberate buffers around them. Exercise is the most effective cortisol reducer available to you. But also look at your workload, sleep, social support, and how you talk to yourself. Cognitive reframing — consciously practising a different interpretation of stressful events — is well-supported by neuroscience as a way of reducing the brain’s stress response over time.
Example: Suzuki found that her cortisol levels were chronically elevated during a particularly intense research period. She introduced daily 30-minute walks and weekly social dinners as non-negotiable commitments. Within weeks, her anxiety had dropped and her focus had noticeably improved.
| TIP #11: Feed Your Brain, Not Just Your Body
What you eat has a direct impact on brain function and structure. The brain consumes roughly 20% of your body’s energy and is extremely sensitive to nutritional quality. Omega-3 fatty acids, in particular, are critical building blocks for brain cell membranes and have been linked to better mood, sharper cognition, and reduced cognitive decline. |
How to implement it:
Prioritise oily fish (salmon, mackerel, sardines), walnuts, flaxseeds, and leafy greens. Minimise ultra-processed food and refined sugar, both of which promote inflammation that is damaging to brain tissue over time. Stay well-hydrated — even mild dehydration measurably impairs cognitive function. The Mediterranean diet, rich in vegetables, olive oil, legumes, nuts, and fish, has more evidence supporting cognitive health than any other dietary pattern.
Example: Suzuki switched from grabbing quick, processed food on the go to meal prepping on Sundays. She noticed within a fortnight that her afternoon energy slumps — which she’d always blamed on her workload — had largely disappeared. It wasn’t the schedule that had been the problem.
| TIP #12: Practice Gratitude to Literally Change Your Brain
Gratitude isn’t just a nice feeling — it’s a neurological event. Research has shown that regularly practising gratitude increases activity in the medial prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex, areas associated with emotional regulation and social connection. Over time, it shifts the brain’s default orientation away from threat and negativity. |
How to implement it:
Each morning or evening, write down three specific things you’re grateful for. The specificity matters — ‘I’m grateful for my health’ is far less effective than ‘I’m grateful that I ran this morning and felt strong.’ The brain responds to detail. Over time, this practice trains your attention to scan for the positive rather than defaulting to the negative, which is where most of our brains start.
Example: One of Suzuki’s students was struggling with exam anxiety that was affecting her performance. She started a gratitude journal and within three weeks reported feeling less anxious walking into tests. Her performance hadn’t just stabilised — it had improved. The content of her thoughts before exams had changed, and her brain followed.
| TIP #13: Treat Boredom as an Opportunity, Not an Enemy
We’ve become so conditioned to fill every quiet moment with our phones that we’ve almost forgotten what boredom feels like. But neuroscience suggests that boredom — real, unstructured downtime where the mind is left to wander — is essential for creativity, problem-solving, and emotional processing. |
How to implement it:
Schedule regular screen-free time. Even 20 minutes of sitting without any input — no podcasts, no scrolling, no background TV — allows the brain’s default mode network to activate. This is the network associated with creative thinking, future planning, and making sense of your experiences. Go for walks without headphones. Sit with your morning coffee without your phone. Let your mind wander. Solutions to difficult problems often emerge during these unstructured periods precisely because you’ve stopped forcing them.
Example: Suzuki noticed that her best research ideas rarely came during focused work sessions. They came in the shower, on walks, or in those quiet moments just before sleep. Once she understood the neuroscience behind this, she started protecting her unstructured time as fiercely as she protected her scheduled work.
| TIP #14: Set Meaningful Goals and Revisit Them Regularly
Goal-setting is a neurological act. When you define a clear, meaningful goal and visualise achieving it, you activate the same brain networks involved in planning and decision-making. Your brain begins to filter incoming information for what’s relevant to that goal — a process called the reticular activating system, or RAS. |
How to implement it:
Write down your goals — not a vague wish list, but specific outcomes with a time frame. Read them every morning. Visualise not just the outcome, but the process: the daily actions required to get there. The brain responds better to process goals (I will exercise three times this week) than outcome goals (I will lose weight), because the process is entirely within your control.
Example: Suzuki set herself the goal of completing a triathlon — something utterly outside her identity as a lab-based academic. The goal forced her to structure her training, manage her recovery, and push through discomfort in a way that no vague ‘get fit’ intention ever had. The specificity was the engine.
| TIP #15: Build Rituals That Stack These Habits Together
Individual habits are good. Stacked habits — where one behaviour triggers the next — are transformative. Suzuki talks extensively about building what she calls ‘brain health routines’: daily rituals that combine movement, mindfulness, social connection, and intellectual engagement in a way that becomes automatic. |
How to implement it:
Design a morning or evening routine that incorporates two or three of the habits from this list. For example: a 20-minute walk (exercise + novelty if you vary the route) followed by 10 minutes of journalling (memory consolidation + gratitude) followed by five minutes of meditation (mindfulness + stress reduction). Once the sequence is established, the friction of each individual habit drops dramatically. You’re not deciding to meditate — you’re just doing the thing that comes after the walk.
Example: Suzuki’s own morning routine evolved over time to include a workout, a short meditation, and reviewing her intentions for the day. She reports that on the days she skips any element, she notices the difference — not dramatically, but enough to make her want to keep the ritual in place. The system protects itself.
Going Deeper: Key Themes from the Book
The Science of Happiness
One of Suzuki’s most compelling arguments is that happiness isn’t a personality trait you’re born with — it’s a brain state you can actively cultivate. The brain circuits associated with positive emotion, reward, and contentment are plastic. They respond to what you feed them.
She draws on the research of positive psychologist Martin Seligman, whose PERMA model (Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Achievement) maps remarkably well onto the neurological interventions she advocates. Each element of PERMA, it turns out, corresponds to measurable changes in brain activity and structure.
The implication is both liberating and demanding: you’re not at the mercy of your neurological baseline. But you do have to do the work.
Memory, Identity, and Who You Think You Are
Suzuki spends considerable time exploring the relationship between memory and identity. We are, in a very real sense, the sum of our memories. They define our sense of continuity, inform our expectations, and shape how we interpret new experiences.
This is why hippocampal health matters beyond just the ability to recall facts. When memory function declines, so does our sense of self. And when we actively work to strengthen memory — through exercise, novelty, sleep, and elaborative encoding — we’re not just improving recall. We’re investing in who we are.
Suzuki’s personal story makes this visceral. Her vivid memories of a childhood trip to Japan, recreated in the book in gorgeous sensory detail, illustrate just how rich and meaningful a well-maintained memory can be.
The Role of Emotions in Learning
Emotion is not the enemy of rational thought. Suzuki is emphatic about this. The amygdala — the brain’s emotional processing centre — is deeply interconnected with the hippocampus. Emotional arousal enhances memory formation. Experiences that make us feel something are remembered far better than neutral ones.
This has profound implications for learning. If you want to remember something, find a way to make it meaningful, surprising, or emotionally resonant. The brain doesn’t prioritise information that is merely accurate. It prioritises information that matters.
Equally, chronic negative emotion — particularly anxiety and prolonged stress — impairs the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex. Managing your emotional life isn’t a soft, optional extra. It’s a core brain health practice.
Ageing and the Brain: The News Is Better Than You Think
Perhaps the most reassuring section of the book concerns ageing. The popular narrative is bleak: cognitive decline is inevitable, memory fades, focus dwindles, and there’s not much you can do about it. Suzuki dismantles this myth thoroughly.
Yes, certain cognitive processes naturally slow with age. Reaction times lengthen. Processing speed decreases. But other capacities — including vocabulary, pattern recognition, and emotional regulation — often improve well into middle and old age. And crucially, the rate of decline in the more vulnerable areas is almost entirely modifiable.
The people who fare best cognitively as they age are not those with the highest IQs or the most impressive educational backgrounds. They’re the ones who stay physically active, remain socially connected, continue to learn new things, and manage stress effectively. These factors appear in study after study, and they’re all within our control.
| “The best thing you can do for your brain as you age is the same as what you should be doing at thirty: move, connect, learn, and sleep.”
— Wendy Suzuki |
A Week-by-Week Brain Health Action Plan
Rather than trying to overhaul everything at once, here’s a phased four-week plan based on Suzuki’s recommendations. Start small. Build consistently. The compound effect is real.
Week 1: Movement Foundation
- Commit to three 20-minute walks this week — no headphones, just observation
- Go to bed 30 minutes earlier than usual for the full seven days
- Write down three specific things you’re grateful for each evening
Week 2: Mindfulness and Social Connection
- Add five minutes of morning breathing or meditation before checking your phone
- Have one real conversation this week — not a text exchange, a proper conversation
- Introduce one piece of novelty: a new route, a new restaurant, a new podcast topic
Week 3: Brain-Challenging Learning
- Begin learning something genuinely new — a language app, a new recipe, a skill tutorial
- Increase your exercise to four sessions, adding one that involves coordination or skill
- Start a simple memory journal: three sentences each evening about the day
Week 4: Integration
- Design your morning ritual by combining two or three habits from the list above
- Review your week: what do you notice about your mood, focus, and energy?
- Set one specific brain health goal for the next 90 days
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Final Thoughts: The Brain You Build Is the Life You Live
Healthy Brain, Happy Life is one of those rare books that manages to be rigorous and readable at the same time. Wendy Suzuki has lived the science she writes about, and that comes through on every page. This isn’t a detached academic text. It’s a personal story about what it looks like to actually apply neuroscience to a real human life.
The central message is both simple and significant: your brain is not fixed. It is not slowly failing. It is not set on a predetermined course that you’re powerless to alter. It is a living, responsive, extraordinary organ that changes in response to what you do, what you think, how you move, who you spend time with, and how well you sleep.
Every one of the 15 tips in this post is backed by evidence. Every one of them is free. None of them require special equipment, unusual talent, or extraordinary willpower. They require only consistency — and the belief that your brain is worth investing in.
Because here’s the truth: the brain you build today is the brain you’ll be living in tomorrow. And the choices you make — starting right now — are the architecture of that future.
Go for the walk. Write in the journal. Call the friend. Try the new thing. Sleep. The science is settled.
The only question is: what are you going to do about it?
Test Your Knowledge: The Healthy Brain, Happy Life Quiz
Think you’ve absorbed the key ideas from this deep dive? Put it to the test with these 15 questions. Answers appear at the very end of this document.
- What is the term for the brain’s ability to change and form new connections throughout life?
a) Neuropathy
b) Neuroplasticity
c) Neurotransmission
d) Neurodegeneration
- Which brain region is most closely associated with memory formation and is known to grow new neurons in adults?
a) The amygdala
b) The cerebellum
c) The hippocampus
d) The corpus callosum
- What does the acronym BDNF stand for?
a) Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor
b) Body-Driven Neural Function
c) Brain-Directed Neuroprotective Formula
d) Biological Dopamine Nourishment Factor
- Wendy Suzuki describes BDNF as which of the following?
a) The brain’s security system
b) Miracle-Gro for the brain
c) The brain’s off switch
d) Liquid memory
- Which part of the brain is often referred to as the ‘inner CEO’, responsible for planning, decision-making, and impulse control?
a) The temporal lobe
b) The hippocampus
c) The prefrontal cortex
d) The occipital lobe
- According to research cited by Suzuki, regular aerobic exercise increased hippocampal volume by approximately how much in participants?
a) 0.2%
b) 1%
c) 2%
d) 5%
- Which of the following neurotransmitters is NOT released during exercise, according to Suzuki?
a) Serotonin
b) Dopamine
c) Norepinephrine
d) Melatonin
- What minimum daily duration of meditation has research shown to improve working memory capacity within two weeks?
a) 5 minutes
b) 12 minutes
c) 30 minutes
d) 60 minutes
- The stress hormone that, in chronic excess, is toxic to the hippocampus is called:
a) Testosterone
b) Cortisol
c) Adrenaline
d) Insulin
- What is ‘elaborative encoding’ in the context of memory?
a) Repeating information out loud until it’s memorised
b) Storing memories in written code
c) Adding rich sensory and emotional detail to strengthen memory traces
d) Breaking memories into smaller, easier chunks
- Suzuki argues that combining which two activities has a particularly powerful compound effect on the brain?
a) Sleeping and eating
b) Aerobic exercise and learning a new physical skill
c) Reading and journalling
d) Socialising and meditating
Which dietary pattern has the most evidence supporting long-term cognitive health?
a) The Paleo diet
b) A high-protein, low-carb diet
c) The Mediterranean diet
d) Intermittent fasting
- Suzuki completed which major physical challenge to illustrate the power of setting a specific, meaningful goal?
a) Running a marathon
b) Completing a triathlon
c) Climbing a mountain
d) Swimming the English Channel
- What does Suzuki say about boredom and unstructured downtime?
a) It is a sign of an underdeveloped brain
b) It should be avoided with stimulating activities
c) It activates the default mode network and supports creativity
d) It is neurologically equivalent to sleep
- Which factor does NOT appear consistently in studies of people who maintain strong cognitive function into old age?
a) Regular physical activity
b) Strong social connections
c) High IQ
d) Continued learning of new skills
Quiz Answers
How did you get on? Check your answers below:
- b) Neuroplasticity
- c) The hippocampus
- a) Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor
- b) Miracle-Gro for the brain
- c) The prefrontal cortex
- c) 2%
- d) Melatonin
- b) 12 minutes
- b) Cortisol
- c) Adding rich sensory and emotional detail to strengthen memory traces
- b) Aerobic exercise and learning a new physical skill
- c) The Mediterranean diet
- b) Completing a triathlon
- c) It activates the default mode network and supports creativity
- c) High IQ
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