Research has found that keeping the brain active helps build brain or cognitive reserves. This is the brain's ability to create new neural pathways and connections that can be used as a sort of 'brain savings account', allowing you to draw on the account at a later date. Studies support that many people continue to operate at a high level throughout their lives by building these brain reserves.
The miracle is that your brain is dynamic and continues to be shaped and to develop. It has plasticity. As such, there is no finite capacity or limitation. In this way your brain is very distinct and actually much superior to the fanciest of all computers because computers will always have built in limitations and finite capacity.
Your dynamic brain is shaped by environmental input across your lifespan beginning in the womb. Their really is no critical period of brain development unless one considers life itself to be the measure. As you will learn in the next section of this book, the type of environmental input to your brain can make a difference regarding the health of your brain. You do have some control and this is great news!