I believe my daily grind of mathematics keeps my brain moving...but remember...it's still just manipulating 0-9.
On the other end, I do historical research which is a massive puzzle. Difficult but it's all connected somehow. I follow the people via maps. I know who was the neighbor of whom...the wives and the kids and the stream they fished in. Fun but what a ride.
Our brains aren’t nearly as mystical as we would like to believe.
I’ve often heard it said that our brains collect all the information that we hear, see, touch, taste etc, but the exact opposite appears to be true. When we look out across a field at a tree, our brains aren’t filing away every blade of grass, leaf, cloud etc into memory. In reality our brains are filling in a lot of info from stored memory of similar scenes and its often pretty vague.
Since taking up photography I’ve noticed how much information I miss while taking the shot but see it for the first time while looking at the photo. I’ve got a picture with several deer way off in the distance that I didn’t see when I took the picture. I do remember taking the picture because I was in a place I don’t usually go and I was further out in the woods than usual but I didn’t see the deer despite having them almost perfectly centered in the shot.