A Hawaii brain-health group is turning lab research into playful physical classes, a hopeful angle for people worried about memory loss as they age.

• The Brain Health Applied Research Institute runs classes that shift your center of balance and make your brain relearn it, over and over.
• Play is the point — adults take risks and try new things when it feels like a game, not a workout.
• Balance is a big deal: in a study of over 150,000 older adults, poor balance came with double the risk of Alzheimer's and triple the risk of other dementias.
• That link is not proof balance problems cause dementia, but balance is a useful window into brain health.
• Spatial mapping matters too — research on London taxi drivers found changes in the hippocampus, the memory region hit early in Alzheimer's.

Outlook: The group is now working with Polynesian navigators in Hawaii to learn what lifelong wayfinding skill can teach about protecting the brain.