Brain Rules: 12 principles for surviving and thriving at work, home and school

The last book of our Professional Reading Club for 2018 is Brain Rules by John  Medina which explains what neruocienctist have learned about the brain explained in a way anybody can understand.

Most of us have no idea what’s really going on inside our heads. Yet brain scientists have uncovered details every business leader, parent, and teacher should know–like the need for physical activity to get your brain working its best. How do we learn? What exactly do sleep and stress do to our brains? Why is multi-tasking a myth? Why is it so easy to forget–and so important to repeat new knowledge? Is it true that men and women have different brains? In Brain Rules, Dr. John Medina, a molecular biologist, shares his lifelong interest in how the brain sciences might influence the way we teach our children and the way we work. In each chapter, he describes a brain rule–what scientists know for sure about how our brains work–and then offers transformative ideas for our daily lives. Medina’s fascinating stories and infectious sense of humor breathe life into brain science.

You’ll learn why Michael Jordan was no good at baseball. You’ll peer over a surgeon’s shoulder as he proves that most of us have a Jennifer Aniston neuron. You’ll meet a boy who has an amazing memory for music but can’t tie his own shoes. You will discover how: Every brain is wired differently Exercise improves cognition We are designed to never stop learning and exploring Memories are volatile Sleep is powerfully linked with the ability to learn Vision trumps all of the other senses Stress changes the way we learn In the end, you’ll understand how your brain really works–and how to get the most out of it.

Brain Rules provides entertaining examples and important advice to improve our cognitive processes without ignoring the underlying molecular mechanisms. Because of this, the book offers insights for both the neuroscientist and the casual reader and provides an important bridge between molecular science and self-improvement.

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Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School by John Medina takes what neuroscientists have learned about the brain and explains it in a way anybody can understand. With a heavy emphasis on the brain as a product of evolution (and countless references to peer-reviewed studies), Medina covers 12 brain functions and explains what goes on in the brain when they take place.

Each chapter begins with an enticing hook, anecdote, or psychological experiment that illustrates some facet of a “brain rule.” Medina then explains the science behind the story while highlighting the importance of specific molecular changes that occur in the brain. Next, he presents guidelines for the reader to implement, such as the value of a power nap or a daily walk, to prevent neurological disorders and improve cognition.

His advice provides a refreshing look at our lives through the lens of current scientific knowledge. Medina also includes several examples of current research in neuroscience to illustrate each brain rule. One interesting experiment explores the brain activity of a patient who observed a picture of Jennifer Aniston and another who viewed a picture of Halle Berry. The study, published by Dr Quiroga in Nature, used depth electrodes to monitor firing behavior of individual neurons in patients with epilepsy. One patient had a neuron that would fire only to a picture of Jennifer Aniston but not to pictures of other famous people. Another patient had a neuron that responded to a picture of Halle Berry dressed as Catwoman, but not to other actors dressed as Catwoman.
Medina even explores brain differences between men and women and notes the “troubled history” of such discussions. Nevertheless, he provides helpful scientific information that neither supports stereotypes nor completely destroys them. In such discussions, he is first a scientist, helping the reader look at the facts and understand the biology before interpreting its application.
In Brain Rules, Dr. Medina outlines 12 interesting ways to understand how our brain works. Each one of rules has a direct application to our understanding of the behavioral analysis. I will briefly give an overview of each of Dr. Medina’s 12 Rules:

Rule #1 Exercise

In this chapter, Dr. Medina discusses how as human beings we were designed to be active. Exercise is an essential part of our long-term health, well-being, and intellect! To be a professional, exercise must be an integral part of a training program.

Scientists believe that for thousands of years humans walked at least 12 miles a day. This suggests that the human brain developed and evolved while people were on the move. Movement being our natural state likely explains why there are so many positive brain-related benefits that are directly caused by exercise.

Regular exercise increases energy level, cognitive performance (reasoning, problem solving, memory, among others measures), attention, self-esteem, immune response, and balance. It has also been shown to decrease your risks of disease (it cuts the likelihood of getting dementia and Alzheimer’s by at least half), and significantly lowers your chances of getting both cancer and depression.

The reason it’s so beneficial to our brain’s health is twofold. Exercise makes oxygen available to the brain while clearing out some of the molecular waste that has built up there. It also helps our feeling of well-being by releasing serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine -which are all linked to improving mood and reducing stress.
And it doesn’t take much exercise to obtain these benefits. Even a small increase in exercise – something as minor as walking for 30 minutes 2-3 times per week – can cause dramatic improvement in all the areas mentioned above.

Rule #2 Survival

This chapter describes how our brains have evolved from simple to complex functions from breathing, and respiration to critical thinking and reasoning. For the combat profiler, our main focus is the actions of the limbic system and our reactions towards our survival.

• The brain is a survival organ. It is designed to solve problems related to surviving in an unstable outdoor environment and to do so in nearly constant motion (to keep you alive long enough to pass your genes on). We were not the strongest on the planet but we developed the strongest brains, the key to our survival.
• The strongest brains survive, not the strongest bodies. Our ability to solve problems, learn from mistakes, and create alliances with other people helps us survive. We took over the world by learning to cooperate and forming teams with our neighbors.
• Our ability to understand each other is our chief survival tool. Relationships helped us survive in the jungle and are critical to surviving at work and school today.
• If someone does not feel safe with a teacher or boss, he or she may not perform as well. If a student feels misunderstood because the teacher cannot connect with the way the student learns, the student may become isolated.
• There is no greater anti-brain environment than the classroom and cubicle.

Rule #3 Wiring

This chapter describes how our brains are wired together. We get a deeper understanding of the neural highway that connects the different parts of our brain. This knowledge of the brain helps us understand how we can affect learning with the knowledge that every brain is wired differently.

Each person’s brain has the same overall structure. For instance, we all have an amygdala at the base of our brains that allows us to experience emotions (and the memories associated with them). But even though we all have the same basic structure, we all have our own unique wiring. The exact place a piece of information is stored, and how it connects to other areas of the brain, is different in each person.

The reason for this is because the wiring in our brains is always changing. Anytime we learn something or get a new experience we are creating new neural connections in our brains. We are also constantly losing neural connections. Whether a connection is gained or lost all has to do with how often it is used. Like a muscle, the more a connection is used the stronger it gets. If a connection isn’t used, it can atrophy and even disappear.

Rule #4 Attention

Dr. Medina describes how our attention works. How multitasking is a myth and what methods we can employ to keep and maintain our attention. This rule has been vital in our teaching methods as we attempt to use stories, and jokes to captivate our audiences. He also helps to explain how focusing on one object at a time is how our attention works. With this understanding, we can affect our employment methods and use two or more individuals, or utilizing a guardian angel as a combat multiplier can be an advantage to the combat profiler.

Part of Medina’s chapter on attention is dedicated to debunking the myth of “multitasking”. Simply put, he argues that multitasking doesn’t exist. Because even though a person can do two things at once, he can only pay attention to one task at a time. As a result, when people try to multitask, they just wind up doing two things poorly.

Multitasking can cause a lot of trouble. For instance, drivers who talk on the phone miss 50% of visual cues on the road and are a full second slower to stop the car in an emergency. People who try and multitask when working not only take longer to complete the task, but end up making more errors (so if you want to work productively, work in an environment that minimizes distraction and interruption).

The thing is, multitasking may appear to be a seamless process where our attention is divided, but that’s just not the case. You can only focus on one thing at a time and shifting your attention to another task is a sequential process: First blood has to rush to the area of the brain that alerts the rest of the brain to the fact that you’re about to switch attention. Then the brain sends of a signal looking for the neurons that can assist in the new task. The brain must then disengage from the areas that were working on the first task and more fully engage the areas that will perform the second task.

In short, when you multitask, your brain constantly has to stop and restart each task. That’s what makes multitasking so inefficient.

Rule #5 Short Term Memory

This rule describes how our short-term memory needs repetition to remember. We also use the concept of the emotion-memory link to solidify memories when given the opportunity. In our training, it is also important to simulate the environment in which we can retrieve the information. We discuss building correct File Folders, or storages of correct memories, utilizing as many sense as possible. So when in a combat environment, we can recollect the file folders necessary for immediate action.

Rule #6 Long Term Memory

This chapter reinforces the use of repetition to transfer memories from short-term to long-term. This is vital to the professional warrior because it requires him to periodically reinforce the material, which is taught. During our courses we hand out easy to digest information cards, which summarize the main points of each profiling domain. This gives our students the opportunity to refresh the concepts we discussed.

As mentioned in the “wiring” section, learning causes our brains to form new neural connections. But if we don’t reinforce those connections then they are lost. Our neurons “reset” which means the information we learned is no longer available.

And this loss happens quickly. It’s been shown that 90% of what people learn in a classroom setting is forgotten within 30 days – and most of that forgetting takes place in the first two hours after class.
But there are some things that will help strengthen that neural connection and allow new information to stick. Here are just a few of the factors that will influence your ability to remember what you’ve learned:

• Repetition. To make something stick in your brain long-term, you want to repeat that information in spaced out intervals. Review a piece of information, and then look at it again in a few hours – and again a few hours after that – and again the next day, etc. That will continuously strengthen the neural connection and give the information more staying power. If you simply try to memorize the information all at once, you’ll forget most of it very quickly.
• Elaborate. It can be tough to make a small piece of information stick. But if you can elaborate that information (go into more detail, use metaphors, etc) then more parts of the brain will become activated when processing that information. With more parts of the brain relating to a piece of information, it’s more likely that a strong connection will form somewhere. As a result you’ll be able to retain the important piece of information.
• Appeal to multiple senses. The reason this works is similar to elaboration. The more senses are activated; the more parts of your brain are at work in processing the information. For example, studies have shown that someone is more likely to remember what you say if you touch them while you say it. Also, people remember 50% more of what they learned at a lecture if there are pictures that go along with what they’re hearing.
  • State-dependent learning. If you are in a certain mood or environment when you learn a piece of information, then you will have an easier time recalling that information when you put yourself in that same mood or environment. This is known as state-dependent learning.

Rule #7 Sleep

This chapter discusses how important and vital sleep is to cognitive function and “soaking” in information you learned in that day. Often when we teach, we will ask students if they have any questions, we usually get the most questions on the topic to following day. This is because they had time to think about what they had learned.

There is not too much uniform structure when it comes to sleep. The time of night a person should go to bed and the number of hours of sleep required varies from person to person. And while some only need to sleep at night, many others are better served by mixing a mid-afternoon nap into their day.

But across the board, we know that sleep is incredibly important. A lack of sleep can increase stress, hurt your metabolism, decrease your cognitive performance (it hinders your memory, focus, and ability to make decisions/think logically) and ruin your mood.

Exactly how sleeps helps in all these areas is still a bit of a mystery. It’s tempting to think that sleep gives the brain a chance to rest, but in fact our brains are more active when asleep than awake. The only area where it is clear just how sleep helps the brain is with learning.

Sleep helps us learn because it gives our brain time to process the information that it took in during the day. Neural connections that were made become strengthened during sleep, which helps what we learned become more deeply ingrained. However, if sleep is interrupted, this process can get disturbed and this cognitive reinforcing isn’t as effective.

Rule #8 Stress

This chapter talks about what goes on in our brains, and bodies as we experience stress. The release of adrenaline and cortisol, in small doses aid in our immediate survival, but chronic stress can be harmful. Managing stress can be obtained by the knowledgeable, well trained, professional warrior.

Stress can sometimes be a good thing. Going back to evolution, stress gave us the alertness we needed to avoid that saber-toothed tiger lurking in the bushes. The benefits continue today, as a small amount of stress and uncertainty has been shown to increase our ability to solve problems.

However, over a long period of time stress causes nothing but trouble. Chronic stress hurts our immune system (decreases our white blood cell count which makes it hard to fight infection), decreases cognitive
function (memory, focus, as well as our abilities to adapt and process new information) and can even cause depression.

The reason chronic stress can cause depression has to do with how stress effects the brain. When too many stress hormones remain in the brain for too long it can overwhelm our brains ability to handle stress. In fact, the brain’s response to stress will completely shut down, causing a condition called learned helplessness. This is when stress has flooded a person’s system for so long that he has completely given up. He’s learned there’s nothing he can do to change his situation. Even if that’s not true and there is something he can do, his brain is incapable of seeing it that way.

Rule #9 Sensory Integration

This chapter discusses how our sensory systems work together. How our brains receive information from sight AND sound to produce a better understanding of our environment. Utilizing MORE senses will aid in our learning and solidify memories.

• Our senses work together so it is important to stimulate them! Your head crackles with the perceptions of the whole world, sight, sound, taste, smell, touch, energetic as a frat party.
• Smell is unusually effective at evoking memory. If you’re tested on the details of a movie while the smell of popcorn is wafted into the air, you’ll remember 10-50% more.
• Smell is really important to business. When you walk into Starbucks, the first thing you smell is coffee. They have done a number of things over the years to make sure that’s the case.
• The learning link. Those in multisensory environments always do better than those in unisensory environments. They have more recall with better resolution that lasts longer, evident even 20 years later.

Rule #10 Vision

Dr. Medina discuses how as humans our most dominant sense is vision. However, we do not see with our eyes, but with our brains. We apply this concept when we teach students by using more pictures and videos to stimulate a better learning environment.

• We are incredible at remembering pictures. Hear a piece of information, and three days later you’ll remember 10% of it. Add a picture and you’ll remember 65%.
• Pictures beat text as well, in part because reading is so inefficient for us. Our brain sees words as lots of tiny pictures, and we have to identify certain features in the letters to be able to read them. That takes time.
• Why is vision such a big deal to us? Perhaps because it’s how we’ve always apprehended major threats, food supplies and reproductive opportunity.
• Toss your PowerPoint presentations. It’s text-based (nearly 40 words per slide), with six hierarchical levels of chapters and subheads—all words. Professionals everywhere need to know about the incredible inefficiency of text-based information and the incredible effects of images. Burn your current PowerPoint presentations and make new ones.

Rule #11 Gender

This chapter discusses our male and female brains are wired different. The information provided can aid the combat profiler when eliciting information from males and females.

While there are clear structural differences between the male and female brain, scientist can’t say what kind of meaningful conclusions – if any – can be reached from this. But scientists have found significant gender differences in the use of the brain. Specifically, how men and women experience emotion and how they communicate.
Women are thought of as being more emotional than men. But really, this is likely a result of that fact that men and women experience emotion differently. Women recall emotionally important events much quicker and with more intensity and detail than men. It’s as if women experience an emotion in HD and surround sound, while men are stuck with an old 10inch black-and-white TV.

Another difference between men and women has to do with communication styles. Women communicate with more eye contact and face-to-face dialogue. When women bond it’s through talking and sharing personal information. Men on the other hand, use less eye contact and often don’t even face one another when communicating. Rather than developing bonds through talking, they bond through shared physical activity. These gender differences begin at childhood, and remain throughout our adult lives.

And the differences in communication styles don’t end there. There’s also a difference in the structure of how men and women communicate. Women, for instance, tend to be more collaborative. When making a decision they will all talk together until they reach a shared consensus. Men tend to communicate in more of a hierarchal fashion. One man will simply give out orders, and the rest will follow.

No one communication style is necessarily better than the other, and it’s a mistake to simply expect women to adopt the male communication style. After all, women have learned that communicating the same way men do simply isn’t a good thing for them to do. Studies show that when women communicate in a man’s style (being direct, giving orders) they are viewed as “bossy” or even “bitchy”. When men behave in the exact same manner, they are simply viewed as “leaders”.

Rule #12 Exploration

This chapter discusses how we develop our brains by exploring the world around us. This gives us an understanding of mirror neurons, which we learn by watching someone else. It is important, when discussing certain topics to SHOW correct action. When we demonstrate a technique, or introduce an optic to our students we utilize a format called E.D.I.P. EDIP stands for Explain, Demonstrate, Imitate, and Practice. This method allows us to take advantage of the “mirror” neurons that Dr. Medina describes.

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