Factors like chronic stress, poor sleep, sedentary lifestyle, and lack of mental stimulation can accelerate this process. However, regular exercise, especially aerobic activity, along with a healthy diet, social interaction, and mental engagement, has been shown to slow hippocampal shrinkage and even promote the growth of new neurons. “We think of the atrophy of the hippocampus in later life as almost inevitable,” Dr. Kirk Erickson at the University of Pittsburgh, one of the authors of the study, had said then. “But we’ve shown that even moderate exercise for one year can increase the size of that structure. The brain at that stage remains modifiable.”