If historians are correct, the ancient Babylonians, one of the earliest civilized societies, practiced the art of the New Year's resolution. To this day, cultures around the world use the turning of the year as a time to reflect on what's past while looking to the future. This New Year more people than ever before will be making brain fitness training their top resolution.

Many tried and true resolutions take us in the direction of better brain health - physical exercise, dieting, and quitting smoking. But brain training provides a direct and positive approach by which we can stimulate brain plasticity, improving memory, focus, and mental agility. One study published this past year even recorded increases in fluid intelligence for subjects who underwent demanding working-memory training.

After many decades of insistence that the adult brain didn't and couldn't generate new brain cells, scientists now understand that this is far from true. The right kind of brain exercise stimulates the production of new nerve cells and prompts the brain to rewire existing connections so that they respond more effectively to the task being trained.

The Advantages of Brain Fitness Training

Academics & Problem-Solving: If you're applying to college or graduate school, you can make brain training part of your pre-test regimen. Traditional test preparation only helps with the tests being taken, but appropriate brain training can increase thinking ability for testing and for your eventual program of study. If you have a learning dysfunction, brain exercise may be able to help correct it. Accommodations work around a disability, whereas brain exercise tackles it head-on.

Job Success: Many jobs nowadays involve processing information and solving tricky problems, demanding a high degree of mental focus. Ironically, the daily blizzard of e-mails, meetings and phone calls make it extremely difficult to find and maintain that focus. By using brain training to increase our attention span and train our cognitive skills we can increase our level of productivity and effectiveness in the workplace, enhancing our earning potential.

Long-Term Mental Health And Well-Being: Unless we do something to stop it, by age 40 our brains have begun to decline. With regular mental exercise, however, we can reduce or eliminate memory loss, and lower our risk of developing Alzheimer's symptoms and dementia. Researchers have even found that depression responds to the kind of stimulated neural growth that brain training can induce.

Self-Improvement: Quite apart from the self-improvement goal of thinking more sharply, brain exercise can also bring about changes that may seem unlikely - such as improved musical ability and increased self-esteem. But when we consider that the brain orchestrates all aspects of thinking and emotion this begins to seem less unusual. If you're the kind of person who likes to optimize mind, body, and spirit, brain training could open up a whole new realm of possibilities.

Keeping To Your Resolution

Studies have shown that the odds don't favor resolution success. Fewer than 15% of us will follow through on our New Year's resolutions. However, men can increase their chances of success by setting measurable targets and milestones. And women do better if they make their goals public and engage their friends in helping them keep to their resolutions. Brain training perhaps has an advantage over some resolutions in that it can become a little addictive by creating self-competition. It also lends itself to measurable targets if the training program records our stats, and to public goals if it allows us to track our scores through an on-line community.

Before starting your brain training regimen, be sure to select a brain-training program that is proven to promote brain plasticity and will fit into your schedule. Since the brain fitness market is relatively new, price isn't a particularly good gauge of effectiveness. Some programs provide brain games that don't require significant focus and attention and won't stimulate new nerve cell growth. Others cost several hundred dollars and demand a significant time commitment.

Check out a program's scientific basis before you buy. Make sure that the vendor sets out clearly what the program will achieve and in what time period. And figure out whether and when you will be able to make time for the training in your schedule. (Typically, you'll need to work on it when you're feeling relatively fresh and rested.)

A brain exercise resolution will reward in equal measure to the effort we invest. Just as we don't expect to stay physically fit without breaking a sweat - so, too, a truly effective brain training program requires our attention and diligence. The rewards to our mental ability, health, and happiness, however, will repay every ounce of that investment.