5. Be A Fish Head

Omega-3 oils, found in walnuts, flaxseed and especially fish, have long been touted as being healthy for the heart. But recent research suggests they’re a brain booster as well, and not just because they help the circulation system that pumps oxygen to your head. They also seem to improve the function of the membranes that surround brain cells, which may be why people who consume a lot of fish are less likely to suffer depression, dementia, even attention-deficit disorder. Scientists have noted that essential fatty acids are necessary for proper brain development in children, and they’re now being added to baby formulas. It’s possible that your own mental state, and even your intelligence, can be enhanced by consuming enough of these oils.

Eating at least three servings a week of fish such as salmon, sardines, mackerel and tuna is a good start.

5. 做一个鱼头

发现于胡桃、亚麻籽、尤其是鱼体内的欧米伽-3 油，长久以来被认为有益于心脏的。但是最近研究显示，它们也是大脑促进剂，不仅因为它们有助于循环系统往你的大脑里压入氧气，它们看起来也改善环绕大脑细胞的薄膜的官能，这可能是为什么食用大量鱼类的人更不易于罹患抑郁症、痴呆病、甚至儿童多动症。科学家注意到，必要的脂肪酸对儿童大脑的完全发育是必须的，它们现在被添加进婴儿配方。有可能通过食用足够的这些油来增强你的精神状态、甚至你的智力水平。

开始可以每星期至少吃三次鲑鱼、沙丁鱼、鲭鱼和金枪鱼等。

6. Remember

Get out an old photo album or high school yearbook. Your brain is a memory machine, so give it a chance to work! Spend time with your memories. Let your mind reflect on them and your mind will repay you in positive emotions and new connections from the memories to help you with your current tasks and challenges.

6. 回忆

取出一个老影集或高中年鉴。你的大脑是一个记忆机器，所以给它一个工作的机会！花一些时间来回忆，让你的记忆将沉思它们，并且回馈你以积极的情绪，并在记忆里建立新的连接，这将有助于你当前的工作和挑战。

7. Cut The Fat

Can “bad” fats make you dumb? When researchers at the University of Toronto put rats on a 40-percent-fat diet, the rats lost ground in several areas of mental function, including memory, spatial awareness and rule learning. The problems became worse with a diet high in saturated fats, the kind that’s abundant in meat and dairy products. While you may never be called upon to navigate a little maze in search of a cheddar cube, these results could hold true for you as well, for two reasons: Fat can reduce the flow of oxygen-rich blood to your brain, and it may also slow down the metabolism of glucose, the form of sugar the brain utilizes as food.

You can still get up to 30 percent of your daily calories in the form of fat, but most of it should come from the aforementioned fish, olive oil, nuts and seeds. Whatever you do, stay away from trans fats, the hardened oils that are abundant in crackers and snack foods.

7. 减肥

有害的"脂肪"能使你傻乎乎么？当多伦多大学的研究人员使老鼠增加40%的脂肪，老鼠在脑功能的几个区域有所减退，包括记忆、空间识别和口令学习。如果食用高度饱和脂肪，肉类和奶制品里富含这种脂肪，问题将会更一步恶化。虽然你不可能被要求穿越一个小迷宫来寻找乳酪块，但这些结果仍对你有效，两个原因：脂肪能减少富含氧气的血液输送到大脑的流量，它也可能减缓葡萄糖的新陈代谢，葡萄糖是大脑养料的一种糖类。

你仍可以以脂肪的形式摄取日需卡路里的30%，但大部分应该来自上述的鱼类，橄榄油、坚果和种子。无论你做什么，远离逆态脂肪（trans fat），它是饼干和零食里富含的一种硬化油。

8. Do A Puzzle

Some of us like jigsaw puzzles, some crossword puzzles, some logic puzzles - it really doesn’t matter kind you choose to do. Doing puzzles in your free time is a great way to activate your brain and keep it in good working condition. Do the puzzle for fun, but do it knowing you are exercising your brain. 

8. 解决难题

一些人喜欢拼图，一些人喜欢组字，一些人喜欢逻辑- 这委实和你选择的种类无关。赋闲时解决一些难题是一种活化你的大脑并使之保持工作状态的良好途径。以解决难题为乐，但要认识到做它是为了锻炼你的大脑。

9. The Mozart Effect

A decade ago Frances Rauscher, a psychologist now at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh, and her colleagues made waves with the discovery that listening to Mozart improved people’s mathematical and spatial reasoning. Even rats ran mazes faster and more accurately after hearing Mozart than after white noise or music by the minimalist composer Philip Glass. Last year, Rauscher reported that, for rats at least, a Mozart piano sonata seems to stimulate activity in three genes involved in nerve-cell signalling in the brain.

This sounds like the most harmonious way to tune up your mental faculties. But before you grab the CDs, hear this note of caution. Not everyone who has looked for the Mozart effect has found it. What’s more, even its proponents tend to think that music boosts brain power simply because it makes listeners feel better - relaxed and stimulated at the same time - and that a comparable stimulus might do just as well. In fact, one study found that listening to a story gave a similar performance boost.

9. 莫扎特效应

十年前，Frances Rauscher（现在是威斯康星大学的心理学家）和她的同事因为发现听莫扎特的音乐能增强人类的数学和空间推理能力而在世界上掀起很大轰动。甚至老鼠在听完莫扎特之后在穿越迷宫时都比那些只听了些白噪声或抽象派作曲家Philip Glass写的音乐的老鼠更加迅速和精确。去年，Rauscher报告，至少对老鼠而言，一首莫扎特钢琴奏鸣曲似乎激活了涉及大脑里传输信号的神经细胞的三种基因。

这听起来像是调节脑力最和谐的方法。但在你抓取CD之前，听一下注意事项。不是每个人期待莫扎特效应的人都会感觉到它。况且，甚至它的支持者趋向于认为，音乐促进脑力仅仅因为它使倾听者感觉更好- 倾听的同时同时身心松弛，大脑受到刺激- 同等的刺激物能达到同样效果。事实上，一项研究发现，听故事时大脑能获得同样效果的促进。

10. Improve Your Skill At Things You Already Do

Some repetitive mental stimulation is ok as long as you look to expand your skills and knowledge base. Common activities such as gardening, sewing, playing bridge, reading, painting, and doing crossword puzzles have value, but push yourself to do different gardening techniques, more complex sewing patterns, play bridge against more talented players to increase your skill, read new authors on varied subjects, learn a new painting technique, and work harder crossword puzzles. Pushing your brain to new heights help to keep it healthy.

10. 提高你重复做事情的能力

只要你期待扩展你的能力和知识储备，一些重复性的大脑刺激是不错的方法。通常的活动，比如园艺、缝纫、玩桥牌、阅读、绘画和做组字游戏都有效果，但是强迫自己去练习不同的园艺技术、更复杂的缝纫式样、和更有天资的玩家玩桥牌来增进技艺、阅读不同主题的新作家的作品、学习一种新的绘画技术、玩更难的组字游戏。强迫你的大脑到达新的高度有助于使它保持健康。

11. Be A Thinker, Not A Drinker

The idea that alcohol kills brain cells is an old one, but the reality is a bit more complicated. In fact, a study of 3,500 Japanese men found that those who drank moderately (in this case, about one drink per day) had better cognitive functioning when they got older than those who didn’t drink at all. Unfortunately, as soon as you get beyond that “moderate” amount, your memory, reaction time is all likely to decline. In the same study, men who had four or more drinks a day fared worst of all.

Just as bad is the now common practice of “binge drinking,” otherwise known as getting hammered on the weekend. Research on rats found that those who consumed large amounts of alcohol had fewer new cells in their brains’ hippocampus region immediately after the binge, and virtually none a month later. This suggests that the alcohol not only damaged the rats’ brains, but kept them from repairing themselves later on - in human terms, that means you shouldn’t expect to pass the Mensa entrance exam any time soon.

11. 做一个思考者，而不是酒徒

酒精破坏脑细胞的思想已经过时了，但现实更为复杂些。事实上，一个由3500个日本人所参与的实验发现，适当饮酒的人（这里指大约每天喝一次）当他们变老后，他们的认知能力比起那些根本不喝酒的人更好一些。不幸的是，一旦你超过了那个"适当的"数量，你的记忆力、反应力都有可能衰退。同一研究表明，一天饮酒次数四次以上的人情况恶化最快。

同样坏的情况是目前"豪饮"的风气，另一种说法是在周末酩酊大醉。老鼠研究发现，大量饮酒的老鼠在刚刚豪饮完毕后，事实上一个星期之后也是这样，其大脑海马区的新生细胞比其它老鼠更少。这个研究表明，酒精不但破坏老鼠的大脑，而且抑制其日后自我恢复- 对人类而言，这意味着你不可能期望以后的任何时候再通过门萨入门测试（译者注：一种智力测试，mensa）。

12. Play

Take time to play. Make time to play. Play cards. Play video games. Play board games. Play Ring Around the Rosie. Play tug of war. It doesn’t matter what you play. Just play! It is good for your spirit and good for your brain. It gives your brain a chance to think strategically, and keeps it working.

12. 玩

花点时间去玩，挤出时间去玩。玩扑克、玩视频游戏、玩棋盘游戏、玩暗夜来电（译者注：ring around the rosie，电影名）、玩拔河。你玩什么都无所谓。只要在玩！这对你的精神和大脑都有好处。它使你的大脑有机会出谋划策。