Sorry to say, our brains naturally start slowing down at the cruelly young age of 30. it used to be thought that this couldn't be helped, but new studies show that people of any age can train their brains to work faster . "Your brain is a learning machine," says prefix = st1 /UniversityofCaliforniascientist Dr. Micha3el Merzenich. Given the right tools, we can train our brains to act like they did when we were younger. All that's required is the practice designed just for the purpose: a few exercises for the mind. Merzenich has developed a computer-based training method to speed up the process  in which the brain deals with information (positence. com). Since much of the data we receive comes through speech, the Brain Fitness Program works with language and hearing to better speed and accuracy .  Over the course of training, the program starts asking you to distinguish   sounds (between "dog" and "dog", for example) at an increasingly faster speed. It's a bit like tennis instructor, says Merzenich, hitting balls at you faster and faster to keep you challenged  . You may start out slow, but before long you're pretty quick. The biggest finding in brain research in the last ten years is that  _ If you ask your brain to learn, it will learn. And it may even speed up while in the process. To keep your brain young and plastic you can do one of a million new activities that challenge and excite you: playing table tennis or bridge, doing crossword puzzles, learning a language...."When it comes to preventing ageing, you really do 'use it or lose it", says Barbara Sahakian, professor at CambridgeUniversity. Dr. Merzenich's training method mainly depends on    _  .
speech training computer languages the activities one joins in the information being dealt with