Book excerpt: A balanced, scientific, and practical approach to monitoring and maintaining your brain's agility and mental health. How do you expand your brain's skills? How do you keep your brain working at its best as it ages? Bookshelves are full of writing by charismatic authors claiming they have found the answer, whether they are neuroscientists, psychologists, or mystics. The Brain Fitness Book looks at the well-established science and recent scientific revelations, and offers a well-balanced, clear, and colorful practical guide to keeping your brain fit. First, it shows you how your brain works--explaining how memories are stored and recalled, for instance, and how different parts of your brain have different functions. It then gives you practical advice and a whole range of exercises to improve memory and mental agility and keep your brain working to its maximum potential. The book includes mental exercises and activities, featuring challenges from logic puzzles and visual reasoning to language learning and sensory exercises, stimulating as many parts of the brain as possible. As well as mental stimulation, the book highlights the role and importance of sleep, a healthy diet, and physical exercise. An agile, healthy brain is not only less prone to age-related decline, it can also conquer stress, anxiety, and the risk of depression. Keep challenging your mind in new ways with The Brain Fitness Book and maintain your brain.