Why Creativity Is Good For Your Brain
What the Nun Study teaches us about cognitive reserve
Hello, Brain Health Ambassadors. It’s been a low snow year here in Jackson Hole, at least it was until this week when we got about 3 feet over just a few days! It feels good to be back to doing usual wintry things like stacking wood, skiing in waist-deep powder, building fires, and quietly watching the flakes stick to my kitchen window. Oh, and having to dig my car out of a snowbank—a reminder not to be in a hurry to get anywhere when it’s snowing.
This weekend I slowed down to tidy up in my office and I found my writing journal from last fall. I had forgotten about a short story I started writing as part of a creativity workshop at Rancho La Puerta. But here it was, handwritten in the pages of my orange leather travel journal between recipe ideas and to-do lists—the bones of a story based on Sprite, a hummingbird I tried to nurse back to health last summer.
Writing fiction is definitely out of my comfort zone. Luckily, the workshop leader, gifted writer, singer, and storyteller Amber Rubarth, gently led my brain to a place where it felt open to new possibilities. First, she shared a few writing prompts. One was to include the words whoosh and wave in the story. Then she reminded us that creativity can be like a shy animal—you have to be patient so as not to scare it away.
As I looked around the room I watched everyone else write furiously with quick hands and focused expressions. My mind was blank. I asked myself: Can I even write a made-up story? I closed my eyes. Nothing. And then, just as Amber had said, a vision of Sprite came to me like a shy animal. She literally “whooshed” into my mind’s eye. I remembered every detail of this beautiful bird and my brain leaped to create a story around her. The words poured out of me and I couldn’t write them down fast enough. It wasn’t until months later that I realized I had been flexing my cognitive reserve muscles, and it felt good. Though this might sound unconnected to brain health, in fact it's as important as eating healthfully.
Today, I’d like to take a short break from our mini-series on metabolic health to talk about another important facet of a brain healthy life—cognitive reserve. Think of cognitive reserve as your brain’s ability to be flexible in the face of new situations. An agile brain has a complex web of neural circuitry that helps you draw on experience and knowledge to solve problems. Cognitive reserve comes from living a life full of curiosity and education that constantly challenges the brain. I also like to think of it like money in the bank—it is your intellectual capital built on years of learning, experiencing new things, and using your brain in novel ways.