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Fish consumption was beneficial for the brain, but brain differences among the groups not correlating with blood omega-3 levels was a surprise. From  Science Daily:

Eating baked, broiled fish weekly boosts brain health, study says

Eating baked or broiled fish once a week is good for the brain, regardless of how much omega-3 fatty acid it contains, according to researchers. The findings add to growing evidence that lifestyle factors contribute to brain health later in life. Scientists estimate that more than 80 million people will have dementia by 2040, which could become a substantial burden to families and drive up health care costs.

"Our study shows that people who ate a diet that included baked or broiled, but not fried, fish have larger brain volumes in regions associated with memory and cognition," Dr. Becker said. "We did not find a relationship between omega-3 levels and these brain changes, which surprised us a little. It led us to conclude that we were tapping into a more general set of lifestyle factors that were affecting brain health of which diet is just one part."

Lead investigator Cyrus Raji, M.D., Ph.D., who now is in radiology residency training at UCLA, and the research team analyzed data from 260 people who provided information on their dietary intake, had high-resolution brain MRI scans, and were cognitively normal at two time points during their participation in the Cardiovascular Health Study (CHS), a 10-year multicenter effort that began in 1989 to identify risk factors for heart disease in people over 65.

"The subset of CHS participants answered questionnaires about their eating habits, such as how much fish did they eat and how was it prepared," Dr. Raji said. "Baked or broiled fish contains higher levels of omega-3s than fried fish because the fatty acids are destroyed in the high heat of frying, so we took that into consideration when we examined their brain scans."

People who ate baked or broiled fish at least once a week had greater grey matter brain volumes in areas of the brain responsible for memory (4.3 percent) and cognition (14 percent) and were more likely to have a college education than those who didn't eat fish regularly, the researchers found. But no association was found between the brain differences and blood levels of omega-3s.

"This suggests that lifestyle factors, in this case eating fish, rather than biological factors contribute to structural changes in the brain," Dr. Becker noted. "A confluence of lifestyle factors likely are responsible for better brain health, and this reserve might prevent or delay cognitive problems that can develop later in life."

The benefits of exercise and being fit keeps growing. From Medical Daily:

Physical Fitness In Your 20s Can Help Preserve Your Thinking Skills Later On In Life

If you need some motivation to get up off the couch and in your running shoes than how about this; a new study has proved that those who are fitter in their 20s are sharper thinkers in their middle age. So not only does exercise improve your health, slim your waistline, and lift your mood, but apparently it can also make you smarter. 

The study was carried out by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco. It started in 1985 and was conducted on nearly 3,000 19- to 30-year-olds in the U.S. The participants were asked to do a treadmill test and undergo physical examinations. They were asked to run for as long as they could without becoming exhausted or short of breath, according to the BBC. Then, 20 years later, the participants agreed to repeat the physical test. Five years after the second physical exam the participants underwent brain testing. These included a word recall test, a number-based test of attention, thinking speed and memory, and a test of how well people can focus while tuning out distractions. Results showed that the better people did on the treadmill test 20 years earlier, the better they did on the memory test. Also, those who had kept up their fitness later on in life scored the best overall in the memory tests. The researchers took into account factors such as weight, sex, drinking, smoking, and education. Still, those who did better on the treadmill test seemed to do better on the memory tests years later. 

The reasoning for this is that the brain uses a lot of oxygen and people who are fitter make more efficient use of oxygen. Also, exercise improves mitochondrial function, which is necessary in making use of energy. It is emphasized that this increase in brain function cannot be attributed to exercise alone. People who are physically fit are less likely to be sat in front of a television and more likely to interact with people and be engaged in life. “Just moving around — being engaged in family and life as opposed to sitting down and watching TV and pretty much not doing anything, they are going to preserve brain function. This is really about engagement in life,” lead researcher David Jacobs told NBC News. The study will continue by observing whether physical fitness in youth makes individuals less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease later on in life. “Investment in research is vital to better understand how we can protect our brains as we age,” Jacobs concluded.

This research also ties in with another study released this week that showed young adults who had better heart health, as measured by blood pressure, have better thinking skills in middle age than those with high blood pressure.