Peeling a mandarin, looking at old photographs, or changing your route to work may seem like overly simple activities, almost trivial when thinking about brain health. Yet behind many of these everyday acts lie processes of memory, perception, movement, attention, and planning that mobilize different neural networks.
Neurologist Cici Feliz, a specialist in movement disorders, has highlighted some of these small habits that can help us improve our brain health.
Seven Habits That Improve Our Brain, According to Neurologist Cici Feliz
The brain does not stay static throughout adult life. Experience, learning, and practice can modify how its networks function and are organized, a phenomenon broadly known as brain plasticity. That does not mean that any activity that “activates the brain” will necessarily prevent cognitive decline or diseases such as Alzheimer’s. But it does explain why introducing variety, movement, social interaction, and cognitive challenges in daily life can be key.
Based on the neurologist Cici Feliz‘s recommendations on her social media, we review ten everyday gestures and analyze how far the scientific evidence supports them.
1. Peeling a Mandarin: Hands, Smell, and Memory
«That gesture activates olfactory memory, fine motor control, and reduces stress», Feliz notes. Peeling a mandarin is, in fact, a multisensory experience. The fingers must apply and regulate force, separate the peel, and manipulate the segments, while the brain receives tactile, visual, gustatory, and especially olfactory information.
The link between smell, emotion, and memory is well studied and established. Olfactory cues access brain circuits closely related to memory and emotions, which helps explain why certain aromas can trigger particularly vivid memories.
Furthermore, some research on the relaxing effects of citrus aromas has shown that exposure to the aroma of yuzu, a Japanese citrus fruit, is associated with a reduction in a saliva marker related to stress and with improvements in some mood measures.
2. Looking at Old Photographs: A Doorway to Autobiographical Memory
«Autobiographical memory is reactivated more strongly than with digital images», says the neurologist. Snapshots can act as powerful keys to recover personal events. Studies conducted with wearable cameras have shown that reviewing images of lived experiences facilitates the later retrieval of autobiographical details.
However, it is not clear that a printed photograph necessarily reactivates memory more intensely than exactly the same image viewed on a screen. Science supports the power of photographs as autobiographical cues, but that specific paper-versus-digital comparison is not yet well established. Still, looking through an old album has an additional component, as it typically involves not only viewing images but also identifying people, reconstructing places, remembering dates and experiences, and relating episodes to one another.
3. Trying to Identify the Ingredients of a Dish Using Taste
«Exercise the gustatory cortex and networks of sensory association», Feliz says. When we eat, more than just the sense of taste is engaged. What we call “flavor” arises from the integration of taste, smell, temperature, texture, and other cues.
Science has shown that the anterior insula participates in gustatory processing. Subsequently, regions such as the orbitofrontal cortex integrate information from taste with olfactory and visual signals, contributing to the overall perception of a food. Moreover, learning allows forming associations between smells and flavors. Therefore, trying to recognize cinnamon, ginger, rosemary, lemon, or any other ingredient while we eat constitutes a small exercise in attention and sensory discrimination.
4. Humming While We Walk
«Rhythm and movement coordinate hemispheres and reinforce plasticity», explains Dr. Feliz. When we synchronize our movements with a rhythm, several brain structures come into play, such as the supplementary motor area, the premotor cortex, the prefrontal cortex, the basal ganglia, and the cerebellum, as found in this 2024 review.
Synchronization between auditory stimuli and movement also has clinical applications. Rhythm has been studied in motor rehabilitation after a stroke and in diseases such as Parkinson’s.
5. Caring for Plants at Home
The neurologist states that “exposure to soil microbiota and mindful attention are neuroprotective”. In this regard, gardening blends several elements, such as physical activity, planning, contact with plants, sensory stimulation, attention, and, depending on the context, social interaction. All of this could have positive effects on the brain, although it is important to note that the studies available so far are not conclusive.
6. Doing a Paper Crossword Instead of on the Mobile
«Handwriting engages more brain areas than typing», says the expert. This claim has been demonstrated by researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, who studied with high-density electroencephalography 36 university students as they wrote words by hand with a digital pen or typed them.
In the end, they found broader patterns of brain connectivity during handwriting. The researchers suggested that the visual and proprioceptive information generated by the precise movements required to form letters can contribute to connectivity patterns related to learning and information encoding. However, there is not yet enough scientific evidence to claim that doing crosswords or paper tasks is more beneficial than doing them digitally.
7. Changing Your Route to Work
«Exercise spatial memory and cognitive flexibility», says the neurologist. Moving through an unfamiliar environment forces the brain to pay attention to landmarks, establish spatial relationships, and constantly update our position.
Science has shown that learning routes and later finding new paths requires constructing sufficiently flexible spatial representations. A study found precisely that planning new routes is cognitively more demanding than repeating previously learned ones.
So, occasionally changing your usual route to work can transform a routine commute into a small orientation task: noticing other buildings, recalling intersections, making decisions, and building new spatial relationships. This does not prove that changing routes prevents cognitive decline, but it does show that novel navigation demands processes of spatial memory and planning.
The neurologist Cici Feliz’s proposals are based on turning ordinary activities into actions that can involve attention, sensory perception, movement, memory, social interaction, spatial orientation, or planning. As we can see, cognitive stimulation does not have to be limited to exercises specifically designed to train the brain. Everyday life already contains numerous opportunities to learn, explore, remember, move, converse, and face new situations.
