Keep Your Brain Alive, a new book by Dr. Lawrence Katz, presents alternative exercises for keeping the brain "in shape" and attempts to bridge the gap between the intricacies of science and the popular demand to learn more about the functions of the human body.
As a James B. Duke professor of neurobiology, Katz said he has noticed that the world of science and "the real world" are often far apart, and that experts in science and medicine rarely penetrate the minds of their less scientifically inclined audiences.
Written in a simple style, Keep Your Brain Alive provides 83 "neurobic exercises" to help prevent memory loss and increase mental fitness.
"[The book] suggests ways of incorporating small changes to make your brain work better," said Katz. "By increasing the agility and flexibility in the brain... you can undertake any type of mental challenge."
Some of these strategies include visiting a farmer's market and walking the dog on a new route.
Katz explained the concept of "neuroaerobics" by saying that people can take control of their mental health and fitness much in the same way that they maintain physical well-being.
He added that a big part of his motivation for writing the book was to show the public that their neurological functions and the quality of their daily lives are closely related.
"I've been interested for a long time in bringing information about the human brain to a popular audience in a way that makes sense to them, instead of just inundating them with complex scientific facts," said Katz, who wrote the book with co-author Manning Rubin. "Although the public pays for basic biomedical research, a lot of what we do is esoteric.... It's important that scientists realize that we need to give the public some practical things that they can use."
With more than 80,000 copies sold, Keep Your Brain Alive has received a great deal of national attention, and Katz said the response from the public has been extremely gratifying.
"A lot of people have expressed their pleasant surprise at the practicality of the book," he said.
Katz also noted that the response from the scientific community has also been positive, although he said there has also been a trickle of anonymous negative responses.
"Although the scientific community is generally skeptical about such works, the scientific community who I respect has responded positively because they also realize the need to make a connection with a broader audience," he said. "But a subset of people who frown upon the enterprise because they think that it's not scholarly have sent anonymous e-mails to Amazon.com."
The debate on that web site has been intense, with some readers charging that the book lacked any basis in scientific fact while others supported Katz's findings.
Dr. Steven Peterson, a professor of neurology at Washington University in St. Louis, said Katz's ideas sounded reasonable.
"There seems to be some empirical data that using your brain in education inoculates you against degenerative processes," he said. "I suspect that those [exercises] would teach you to do things in a slightly different way."
Katz recently completed a tour in which he visited about 20 major cities and conducted hundreds of radio and television interviews, including appearances on The Today Show and National Public Radio.
Meredith Young contributed to this story.
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