A face-to-face conversation is incredibly beneficial for your brain. A study by the University of Michigan found that even just 10 minutes per day of conversation with another person improved memory and cognition.¶”In our study, socializing was just as effective as more traditional kinds of mental exercise in boosting memory and intellectual performance,” said Oscar Ybarra, a psychologist at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR) and a lead author of the study with ISR psychologist Eugene Burnstein and psychologist Piotr Winkielman from the University of California, San Diego.