Facts about the brain:

• The brain is a developing muscle that is not fully wired until the third decade of life. This helps explain the difference between what a child understands and values and what an adult understands and values.
  
  
• The highest rate of brain growth occurs during adolescence -- our culture's most challenging developmental stage.
  
  
• A newborn has 100 billion neurons -- the approximate number of stars in the Milky Way. During the first two years of life, 250,000 neurons are added per minute.
  
  
• A high school graduate's brain weighs three pounds and has more than100 trillion connections -- more than half of all Internet connections in the world.
  
  
• Brain neurons are wrapped in myelin, which increases the speed of brain signals from one region to another. Proper myelin development increases brain processing speed.
  
  
• The prefrontal cortex is considered the executive of cognitive and behavioral functioning. It takes three decades for this part to develop!
  
  
• No two brains are exactly alike. Development between any two brains can vary by as many as five years.

How can i get my brain to improve?

Read every single day for 30 days. You'll notice improved analytical and problem-solving skills. Inactivity causes a loss of neuron receptors, whereas activity can gain (and regain) receptors. That equals brain power.

Stop watching so much TV. Here's why:

• Spending hours in front of the "boob tube" causes stress, fatigue and lack of energy.
• When the TV Is on, people don't talk, and this hurts relationships.
• TV is addictive.
• Too much TV is boring! Chatting with people you love, reading books, taking walks are all more interesting.

"Oh, but don't watch that much TV." Are you sure? The average adult watches more than four hours per day. That's 25 percent of the time you spend awake -- three months per year. At that rate, an 80-year-old will have watched 116,800 hours watching TV. Just what will he have accomplished in that time? What would/could you do with 116,800 hours?

Stay hydrated. Your brain is an estimated 90 percent water. Particularly before a test or mental exercise, drink a tall glass or two.

Engage in new activities. Dance, go running, play a sport, practice yoga, listen to music, travel, ride a bike, or play chess, checkers, board games.

Challenge yourself. Use your computer mouse with the other hand. Communicate with hand signals. Get dressed with one eye shut. Pay attention to the smells of flowers or food. Walk to work or class on a new route. Eat with the opposite hand. Talk of different topics. Imagine yourself as a hero.

Go walking or running. Studies show that walking sends oxygen and glucose to your brain, while running saves brain cells that are about to die -- typically those used for memory and learning.

Read. Doing so before the age of 18 results in better adult brain functioning -- but it's never too late to start.

Exercise. Studies show that inactive people are twice as likely to develop Alzheimer's Disease. We are never too old to benefit from mental training to fight against a downward cognitive development. Thirty minutes of aerobic exercise per day, three days per week improves cognitive abilities such as reasoning and memory. It can even fight depression and lessen the need for certain medications.

Eat omega-3s. These fatty acids are found primarily in fish (especially wild salmon), walnuts, flax seed and olive oil and are good for your brain as well as your heart.

Your brain improves with every attempt to learn something new. Even if you do not fully learn a new concept or skill, your brain actually gets faster, bigger, creative, more productive and more powerful. Actually knowing how to do that math problem doesn't make your brain more powerful…the process of learning how to do it does.

Try these three exercises for your brain:

1. Marble mixup: Imagine that you are offered a chance to win lots of money by playing a marble game. You are given 50 white marbles, 50 black marbles and two empty bowls. You may divide the 100 marbles in the two bowls any way you want, as long as you use all the marbles. Then, you will be blindfolded, and the bowls will be mixed around. You then will choose one bowl and one marble. If the marble is white, you win! So, how do you divide the marbles up so you have the greatest probability of choosing a white marble?

Answer: Coming soon!

2. Cakes for Grandma: It is your grandmother's birthday, and you want to bring her two cakes. Between your house and your grandmother's are seven bridges; each bridge has a troll. Each troll insists you pay a toll of half the cakes you are carrying. When you give the troll half the cakes you are carrying, the troll then gives one cake back to you. How many cakes do you need to leave your house with so that you arrive at your grandmother's house with two cakes?

Answer: Coming soon!

3. Are you crazy? During a visit to a mental asylum, a visitor asked the director what the criterion is for a patient to be institutionalized. The director demonstrated the test on a potential patient: She filled a bathtub with water. Then she offered him a teaspoon, a teacup and a bucket, and asked him to empty the tub. The visitor said, "Oh, I get it -- a 'normal' person would choose the bucket because it is larger than the rest." What was the director's response?

Answer: Coming soon!