Like your muscles, your mind needs exercise to stay in shape. Check out these brain foods.

Fish
The infuriating news for the lab-coated boffins across the globe, following years of painstaking research and clinical testing, is that Mum was right all along. Fish really is brain food.

Fish are stocked to the gills with omega-3 fatty acids, which, according to a study led by Dr Alex Richardson of Mansfield College, Oxford, in the UK, are the trained Thai masseuses offering executive relief to your overworked grey matter.

These versatile little oils combat stress and hyperactivity, boost your thought processes and, ironically (given that fish are famous for their forgetfulness), improve memory. Fish also contain protein, supplying you with tyrosine and phenylalanine, two amino acids that ply your brain with the juice it needs to remember how to spell them.

Eggs
They're a rich source of choline. Studies have shown that college students who received 3g to 4g of choline one hour before taking memory tests scored higher than those who didn't.

Spinach
The gastronomic advice of yet another childhood influence has also been proven to stock up on our brainpower. For Popeye, spinach may have had the same effect as a shot of speedy anabolic steroids, but for the rest of this apparently inert-looking salad fodder may be the key to keeping our brains pumped full of goodness as we age.

Spinach contains vitamin B12 and folate - which protect against Alzheimer's and Parkinson's - and high levels of vitamins C and E, which improve our speed of learning.

Almonds
These nuts are rich in Vitamin E. A National Institute of Health study in the US found that the antioxidative properties of vitamin E reduce deterioration in the brain.

Turkey
This fowl contains the amino acid tyrosine, which has been shown to help the brain maintain levels of dopamine, an important neuro-transmitter for memory. US military researchers found that soldiers did better on multi-tasking and memory test when they'd consumed a food rich in tyrosine an hour earlier.

Porridge
University of Toronto researchers in Canada recently determined that eating carbohydrate-rich foods such as porridge is equivalent to a shot of glucose (blood sugar) injected into your brain. According to the study, the higher the concentration of glucose in your blood, the better your memory and concentration.

Blueberries
Dark-coloured fruit and vegies - especially blueberries and strawberries - are high in antioxidants. In research on rats at Tufts University in the US, Dr James Joseph found that older rodents fed blueberry extract had improved short-term memory and motor skills.

Olive Oil
Popeye's better half is also good for noggin. According to Dr Michele Tagliati of the Beth-Israel Hospital Institute for Neurology and Neurosurgery in New York, cholesterol and fatty acids are highly sought after by the brain's white matter.

Not all fats are good, however - animal fats create traffic jams in the body's infrastructure and staunch the flow of blood to the brain, which can lead to problems with memory and dementia. Olive oil, short of causing you to be sporadically abducted by a deranged sailor, shouldn't give you any such problems.