Joe Bates, MD

Author of Making Your Brain Hum: 12 Weeks to a Smarter You

Dr. Joe Bates is a board-certified psychiatrist and pediatrician who currently serves as the clinical director at Rusk State Hospital in Rusk, Texas. He is a native of Homer, Louisiana, and graduated from LSU School of Medicine in New Orleans, where he was president of the Alpha Omega Alpha medical honor society and was honored with the "Highest Ideals of Medicine" award. Dr. Bates received the Bronze Star for his service in Vietnam with the US Army as a major in the Medical Corps. He completed residencies at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and has taken a leadership role in medical practice and teaching for the past fifty years. In 2013, a wellness program designed by Dr. Bates was the recipient of the David Pharis award for making significant contributions to the safety and quality of inpatient care and outcomes for Texas state psychiatric hospitals. This program has recently been endorsed by the Joint Commission and is included in the national Leading Practice Library. Dr. Bates is a member of the Christian Medical Society and has traveled to Russia, Estonia, and Belize on mission trips. He was awarded the national 2015 Mensa Intellectual Benefits to Society Award for his work with cognitive remediation training. He and his wife, Paula, live in Tyler, Texas, and are the proud parents of four children and grandparents of thirteen.

When it comes to personal fitness, two popular sayings make the rounds: “No pain, no gain" and “Use it or lose it." In Making Your Brain Hum, we dispense with the former axiom—Why make it hurt if we don’t have to?—and stick with the latter adage. This is about using our brain and keeping our mental gears well oiled long after others have called it quits and ditched their thinking caps.Years ago, medical students were taught that once brain cells died, they stayed dead. Medical science in those dark days dished out the claim that cognitive corrosion after age fifty was inevitable. The good news? All that mental-decline stuff from fifty years ago was bunk! The deadheads didn’t know what they were talking about. New research shows the human brain to be more pliable and regenerative than ever imagined. Learning should be endless: it’s just a (gray) matter of consistently exercising your brain as you get older, periodically challenging it—just like we do with our hearts, minds, and bodies while walking, jogging, or bicycling—in order to keep our brain functioning at peak capacity. Making Your Brain Hum takes you through a steady dose of puzzles and brain teasers designed to give your brain a healthy workout. These brainy drills will enhance your mental agility and endurance, adding years to your cognitive life while generating loads of fun in the process. Make your brain hum. Dr. Bates is a published contributor to Current Psychiatry and the 2015recipient of the Mensa Education & Research Foundation’s Intellectual Benefit to Society Award.