Dr. Kaplan’s Brain Health

Dr. Kaplan’s Brain Health Think Faster and Remember More with Dr. Kaplans Brain Health

Is it ever too late to learn an instrument?Never!A four-year study followed older adults who had started learning an ins...
09/09/2026

Is it ever too late to learn an instrument?
Never!

A four-year study followed older adults who had started learning an instrument later in life.

Those who kept playing showed better preservation of verbal working memory and gray-matter volume in the right putamen, a brain region involved in movement and learning.

Researchers also found differences in cerebellar activity during working-memory tasks, another interesting clue that continued musical practice may be linked with how the aging brain adapts over time.

Important caveat, participants chose whether to keep playing, so this study cannot prove that music caused the differences.

Still we love the larger message, the brain remains capable of learning, adapting and changing later in life.
So maybe the question isn’t, “Am I too old to start?”
Maybe it’s, “What would I love learning enough to keep playing?”🎹 🎶

Health
Study: Wang et al,. Imaging Neuroscience, 2025.

Want to know how well you really understand something? Try explaining it to someone else.Teaching asks more of the brain...
09/07/2026

Want to know how well you really understand something? Try explaining it to someone else.

Teaching asks more of the brain than simply rereading information. You have to retrieve what you know, organize it into a logical sequence, put it into your own words, and often discover the places where your understanding is still a little fuzzy.

Research on learning by teaching supports this idea. In experimental studies, students who prepared to teach or actually explained material to others showed advantages in measures such as recall, organization of knowledge and longer-term learning.

Research on self-explanation and retrieval practice points in the same direction: actively reconstructing and explaining information can strengthen learning more than simply reviewing it again.

The useful part is that you don’t need a classroom, or even an actual student.

Try this:
Learn something new.
Put your notes away.

Explain it aloud as if you were teaching someone who knows nothing about it.
Notice where you hesitate or struggle to explain. That may be exactly where you need to go back and learn a little more.

Teaching isn’t a magic shortcut, and it won’t automatically outperform every other study strategy. But it can turn learning from passive review into something much more active: retrieve it, organize it, explain it.

What could you teach someone today? 🎸🧠

Your ears collect sound.Your brain gives it meaning. 🧠🎶The auditory cortex, located primarily in the temporal lobe, is a...
09/07/2026

Your ears collect sound.
Your brain gives it meaning. 🧠🎶

The auditory cortex, located primarily in the temporal lobe, is a key part of the brain’s sound-processing system.

It helps analyze features such as pitch, timing, intensity and sound patterns. From there, auditory information is shared across broader brain networks that help us recognize speech, follow a melody, identify where a sound is coming from, connect sounds with memories, and respond emotionally to music.

That means hearing is far more than simply detecting vibrations in the air.
When you recognize a familiar voice, notice that a note is off-key, or know a favorite song within the first few seconds, your brain is rapidly turning sound into information.

The auditory cortex is where that remarkable process begins.

09/06/2026

Stress can make the mind feel loud, harder to focus , think clearly, and respond with intention.

Slow comfortable breathing cannot remove the source of stress. But it can begin to change the body's response to the moment.

Breathing and the nervous system communicate in both directions. When you deliberately slow your breath, especially with an easy, unforced exhale, physiological arousal may begin to settle.

That can create a little more room for attention, perspective, and a calmer response.

In a randomized controlled study, adults practiced five minutes of structured breathing each day for one month. Breathwork, especially an exhaled-focused pattern, improved mood and reduced breathing rate compared with mindfulness meditation.

The study used a specific five-minute practice, so five breaths are not a treatment or a magic reset. Think of them as a pause, a way to interrupt autopilot, return to the present and give your brain a quiter starting point for whatever comes next.

Notice you breath,
Take one slow inhale.
Let the exhale be comfortable.
Begin again.

Where could you use one quiet minute today?

Study: Balban et al., Cell Reports Medicine, 2023.

09/05/2026

SURPRISE BRAIN GAME! 🎻

The conductor needs your help!

Watch the instruments carefully and see if you can remember the order!

Which instrument came right before the piano? 🎹

Using memory, attention and recall keeps your brain actively engaged—and little brain games like this are a fun way to to put those skills to work.

No rewinding until you've made your guess!

Share this challenge with a friend and drop your answer in the comments!

This week’s Brain Food Spotlight is bright, simple, and easy to love: oranges.🍊Oranges are the best known for vitamin C,...
09/05/2026

This week’s Brain Food Spotlight is bright, simple, and easy to love: oranges.🍊

Oranges are the best known for vitamin C, and that matters to the brain more than many people realize.

Vitamin C helps support the brain’s antioxidant defenses and is also involved in important processes related to normal brain function, including the production of certain neurotransmitters.

Of course, no single food determines brain health. But regularly choosing nutrient-rich whole foods is one of the most practical ways to support a brain-healthy lifestyle over time.

And oranges bring more than vitamin C to the table, they’re also refreshing, hydrating, and easy to work into everyday life.

Sometimes brain health support looks less like something complicated... and more like peeling an orange. 🍊

Your brain has a clock, and light helps set it.Circadian rhythms are the roughly 24-hour cycles that help coordinate whe...
09/04/2026

Your brain has a clock, and light helps set it.

Circadian rhythms are the roughly 24-hour cycles that help coordinate when your brain and body are prepared for wakefulness, rest and sleep.

Light is one of the strongest signals to this internal clock. Morning and daytime light help reinforce alertness and daytime timing, while darkness in the evening helps prepare the body for sleep.

Why does that matter for the brain?

A well-aligned circadian rhythm supports more consistent, restorative sleep, and quality sleep plays an important role in memory, attention and overall cognitive function.

That doesn’t mean ordinary daylight is the same as the tailored light intervention we highlighted in yesterday’s Neuroscience Frontier study. But the underlying biology helps explain why researchers are so interested in the relationship between light, sleep, circadian rhythms and cognition.

Sometimes supporting your brain starts with something very basic, helping it know when it’s day, and when it’s time to rest.

Could light become part of the future of cognitive care?A new randomized, placebo-controlled study explores that questio...
09/03/2026

Could light become part of the future of cognitive care?

A new randomized, placebo-controlled study explores that question in 61 adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI).

For 24 weeks, participants received either a home-based tailored light intervention designed to strengthen circadian signaling or a placebo-light condition.

The group receiving the tailored light intervention showed greater improvement on a standardized memory test called the ADAS-Cog, which is commonly used in studies of cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease to measure areas such as memory, language, attention and other thinking abilities.

Researchers are now asking whether supporting the body's natural light-dark rhythm could also support memory, sleep and cognition.

The active-light group also showed improvements in several measures related to sleep and nighttime wakefulness,

Why might light matter?

Light reaching the eyes does more than help us see. It also sends information to the brain's internal clock, helping coordinate daily rhythms of wakefulness and sleep.

This was a small study, and it did not show that light prevents Alzheimer’s disease or reverses MCI. The intervention used a specially tailored circadian-effective light, not red-light therapy, near-infrared light therapy or simply a brighter household lamp.

But the findings offer an intriguing signal, and another reason scientists are looking closely at the connection between light, sleep, ciracadian rhythms and brain health.

Sometimes something as familiar as light turns out to have biology we are only beginning to understand.

Study: Li W, et al. Journal of Applied Gerontology. 2026

To make one action possible, the brain must also quiet the alternatives.Deep within the brain, the basal ganglia help se...
09/01/2026

To make one action possible, the brain must also quiet the alternatives.

Deep within the brain, the basal ganglia help select the movement or behavior that fits the moment while helping suppress competing actions.

The basal ganglia are not one structure. They are a group of paired structures working together. In this simplified coronal view:

Yellow—caudate nuclei
Blue—putamina
Orange—globus pallidi
Turquoise—subthalamic nuclei
Lower navy bands—substantia nigra

The lavender structures are the thalami, closely connected partners, but not part of the basal ganglia.

The upper navy shapes represent the lateral ventricles.

Working through interconnected loops with the cortex and thalamus, these circuits contribute to action selection,movement, motivation, reward-based learning and the development of habits and skills.

With repetition and reinforcement, frequently practiced behavoirs can become more automatic. That efficiency allows familiar actions, like typing, driving or following a morning routine, to require less conscious effort.

Dopamine helps these circuits learn from outcomes, influencing which actions are more likely to be selected again. This places the basal ganglia at a fascinating intersection of movement, motivation and habit.

Change is not instant, but with practice, the brain can make a healthy action easier to choose again.

What is one healthy behavior that has become almost automatic for you?

09/01/2026

Change doesn't happen overnight, but the brain continues responding to what we do consistently.🧠

NutriCog® is a patented, standardized botanical blend of Haritaki (Terminalia chebula) and Boswellia serrata included in Dr. Kaplan's Brain Health at the same 300 mg daily dose sudied in clinical research.

In a 120-day randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study of 100 adults ages 40-65 with subjective memory concerns, researchers reported improvements across several measures of cognition compared with placebo:

By Day 15: improvements appeared in recognition and resistance to proactive interference.
By Day 60: learning rate,total learning and delayed recall had improved.
By Day 90: immediate recall had also improved.
By Day 120: researchers also reported improvements in measures of visual learning, processing speed and accuracy, along with higher serum BDNF.

What makes these findings especially interesting is the progression over time, with different measures of memory, learning and cognitive performance emerging at different points throughout the 120-day study.

We include NutriCog because there is human clinical research behind it, and because we believe ingredients should earn their place in a formula through evidence.

Study: Salter D, et al. Frontiers in Nutrition. 2025

To read more about NutriCog go to: https://drkaplans.com/blogs/news/nutricog%C2%AE-the-science-behind-a-novel-botanical-blend-for-memory-learning-cognitive-performance

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