8 Hobbies Neuroscientists Recommend to Keep Your Brain Sharp
In our fast-paced world, it’s often advised to streamline your routines and mentally coast through challenges to reduce stress. However, optimizing your life to the point where you’re actually bored can be doing more harm than good. Your brain actually benefits from a certain degree of difficulty.
Fortunately, you don’t need overly complicated apps or neurofeedback devices to improve your cognitive health. We asked neuroscience experts to share regular, everyday hobbies that can strengthen your brain in meaningful ways. Here are the ones they personally recommend most for staying active, adaptable, and sharp for the long haul.
Join a Book Club
For starters, break out your Kindle or, even better, join a book club to add a social element to your reading. “Exposure to a wide range of reading materials can reveal novel points of view and a new lens for viewing the world,” says Stacy Vernon, LPC, licensed professional counselor and lead coach at the Center for Brain Health. “Reflecting on new ideas challenges status quo thinking and strengthens the brain’s capacity for innovation.”
After finishing a book, Vernon recommends asking yourself what two themes or important takeaways stand out. “Distill your insight and share it. Consider how you might incorporate this new information into your daily life,” she says, adding how helpful it is to process different perspectives and try to really understand them, even if you don’t agree
Get Outdoors
Take your hobbies outdoors for better brain health! “Find a group dedicated to hiking, biking, or birding—it all counts,” Vernon says. “When people spend time in natural settings, the brain tends to show signs of reduced stress, less mental effort, and improved emotional regulation. Being in nature can also create a feeling of awe, which can stimulate mental flexibility and creativity.”
As you engage in your outdoor activity, make sure to appreciate new or hidden sources of beauty in your natural environment. “Share this exquisite observation with someone else,” Vernon says. This will help reinforce both the initial brain benefit associated with nature and the social connection. If there are physical limitations at play, Vernon recommends simply viewing pictures of the outdoors, which she says can give you a similar boost.
Volunteer Your Time
Supporting a cause or volunteering is a worthwhile hobby, especially when research shows it can reduce stress, negativity, and even cognitive decline.2 “A sense of purpose in life is a strong predictor of better brain health,” Vernon says. “Explore your core values and how they bring meaning to your life. Seek points of connection with others who may bring different perspectives.” Some common and accessible volunteering examples include working at a local food pantry, joining a community garden initiative, or mentoring at a local kids group.
Schedule a Game Night
Some board games are easy, whereas others are just difficult enough to engage you without becoming frustrating or mentally draining. “Focusing on a challenging puzzle or game invokes possibility thinking and innovation,” Vernon says. “Seek out enjoyable games that require decision-making, problem-solving, and higher-order reasoning.”
Vernon is quick to point out that some enjoyable puzzles and games (especially online) keep your brain “busy” without stimulating higher-level thinking. To offset that mental autopilot effect, she recommends regularly switching up the types of games you play and challenging yourself with new formats or strategies.
She also notes that game nights create yet another opportunity to meet and connect with different people, which plays an important role in long-term brain and emotional health. Step outside your comfort zone and invite people with varying interests to keep the competition dynamic.
Pick Up a Musical Instrument
Learning a musical instrument is a great hobby for your brain. (Is anyone surprised?) “It requires the brain to process new information, build memory, recognize patterns, and develop new skills,” says William Nields, MD, a primary care physician and chief medical officer at Grey Matters: Precision Brain Health Centers. “Even if you’re great at music, introducing something new can sharpen your brain.”
The correlation between playing music and brain health has been studied repeatedly. “Music training produces some of the most reliable structural brain changes we've documented,” says Emilė Radytė, PhD, neuroscientist and CEO of Samphire Neuroscience. “Musicians show increased gray matter volume in motor, auditory, and visuospatial cortices. Mechanistically, instrument practice is a multimodal workout (fine motor control, auditory processing, working memory, and emotion regulation), which is rare in everyday tasks.”
These effects are most notable in people who started playing instruments as children. However, Radytė assures us that even if you’re just learning as an adult, you can still experience measurable cognitive gains, just on a slower curve.
Learn a New Language
Learning a new language, just like learning a musical instrument, is more challenging for adults than for children. That’s likely why these hobbies are so helpful if you have the patience to stick with them. “Bilingualism is associated with a 4-5 year delay in dementia onset,” Radytė says.
“Even adult learners can strengthen prefrontal executive control. Constantly suppressing one language to use another is, mechanistically, a workout for inhibitory control. It's never too late to start with Duolingo!”Start Dancing
Many cognitively challenging hobbies can protect your brain health as you age, but not all physical activities have the same impact. “Dance is the only physical activity that showed protective effects against dementia in a large prospective cohort,” Radytė says. Such a workout challenges your motor sequencing and spatial navigation, while also increasing your social engagement.
If you’ve never danced before, start with beginner-friendly styles like Zumba, which you can try online first to learn the steps without feeling overwhelmed. But if dance is not your thing, don’t worry! The finding about dancing came from a single study, but other research still shows that any regular physical activity can support long-term brain health.
Change Up Existing Hobbies
The best news of all: You can help your brain out by trying literally any new hobby or even approaching familiar activities in new ways.“You want to continuously challenge your brain with engaging tasks that are unfamiliar, and you can do that even with hobbies you enjoy now,” Dr. Nields says. “If you walk or bike, take a different route. Try navigating without GPS. If you play crosswords or Sudoku, try adding chess, Scrabble, card games, strategy games, or anagrams to introduce different types of thinking and mental flexibility.”
The main goal is to challenge the brain with novel experiences, which can help stimulate new neural pathways and strengthen brain function. “A common thread I'd definitely emphasize is that the hobbies that work hardest on the brain are the ones demanding something it doesn't usually do, i.e., new motor patterns, new symbolic systems, new attentional demands,” Radytė says. “Passive consumption (which is what we do most of during the day) just doesn't cut it.” In other words, it matters less what hobby you pick and more whether the activity pushes your brain to adapt, problem-solve, and stay mentally engaged.