Brain Rules by John Medina

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Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School

By John Medina, 2014, Pear Press, Seattle, WA, USA. Updated and expanded edition. ISBN-13: 978-0983263371 (last viewed price: US$9.15 on Amazon.com, softcover)

Rated approximately 4.5 stars on Amazon. Ranked #6791 in Books, and #'s 4, 11, and 20 in various "cognitive" and "neuroscience" categories.

From the jacket: "John Medina is a developmental molecular biologist and research consultant. He is an affiliate professor of bioengineering at the University of Washington School of Medicine. He was the founding director of two brain research institutes."

This is an entertaining and remarkably informative journey about the (mostly) human brain. While Dr. Medina occasionally dips into brain physiology ("The amygdala is responsible for the creation of emotions and the memories they generate."), most of the discussion is about how researchers think the brain works. The discussion guides the reader toward effective methods for self-improvement, parenting, and teaching.

Our Savanna History

As early humanoids came out of the trees:

Our ancestors evolved to walk upright (better to see above the tall grasses). Bipedal walking conserved energy that could now be redirected toward enlarging the brain.
Our brain is about 2% of body weight yet consumes 20% of our energy.
About 40,000 years ago, we developed symbolic reasoning (evidenced by painting and sculpture).
There were brutish weather changes, and cognitive development enabled learning, making inferences, and making predictions. [Some of this sounds like machine learning--a current hot topic.]
We were accustomed to walking about 12 miles a day. Humans still learn and think better when there is lots of movement in our day. Medina suggests that we perform some of our work and meetings while walking (treadmills will do). Children will learn better if their school days include substantial time for aerobic and strength exercises.
To survive, we needed to constantly surveil the environment. Something would get our attention: Is it something I can eat or might it eat me? Is it something I can mate with or does it want to mate with me? Is it something I have encountered before?

Every Brain is Different

I was surprised at the brain variations. "Left" and "right" brain operations, for example, are not nearly as defined as commonly believed. Memory storage is widely distributed and only partially localized in brain sectors. Children's brains develop is as diversely as they appear physically.

The "terrible two's" and the "terrible teens": At about age two and during the teen years, the neurons in a brain experience a large increase in the number of connections formed. These are afterward pruned to typical adult levels.

Memories are volatiles and subject to corruption. Brains do not rest during sleep. They appear to replay activities, inputs, and emotions perhaps hundreds of times during sleep; this repetition is key to learning.

There is a continuum of early- and late- people, "morning people" vs. "late people." Teenagers temporarily turn into "owls," and trying to teach them in the early day hours is problematic. Perhaps people should be grouped by "chronotypes" (sleep schedules) into distinct work and learning schedules.

I remain puzzled at how some rare brains can keep precise track of time, precisely estimate dimensions, do complex arithmetic, and remember everything they have ever read. Neural connections, to me, seem incapable of "photographic memory."

Teaching and Learning

Medina's key beliefs about learning include:

Physically fit and well-rested children and adults learn and perform better. Exercise improves the brain's vascular network. A mid-afternoon nap boosts performance perhaps better than any other investment. NASA found that pilots typically boosted their performance about 34% after a 26-minute nap.
Long-term learning--what we aspire to--is best achieved by introducing new information gradually, having repetition in timed intervals, and practicing recall. If you wanted to create an education environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you probably would design something like a classroom. If you wanted to create a business environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you probably would design something like a cubicle."
Medina suggests that school days be divided into 25-minute topic modules, with each alternating topic repeated three times during the day. Inserted mid-morning would be 20-30 minutes of aerobics, and mid-afternoon would include 20-30 minutes of strength training. The class day and year would be longer; however, there would be little need for homework (and more time for sleep). Every third or fourth day would be reserved to review what was covered in the prior several days.
Children's brains are as different as their physical bodies. Various regions of the brain develop at different rates among different people. Many kids do not read at the level at what is expected for their age. Medina says this deserves the teacher's individual attention, and that requires smaller classes. Grade structures based upon age should be dismantled.
Multi-tasking does not work. It reduces productivity and increases mistakes. Someone can monitor several inputs at once. However, it is impossible to focus on multiple tasks.
People typically forget most of what they learned in a class after a few hours, and 90% after a month.
For college courses, Medina has been chunking the 50-minute periods into five 10-minute segments. Explain the lecture plan at the start; revisit the plan after each segment to help the student organize the concepts. People pay attention only to something of interest; ten minutes is the typical student's attention span. He devotes each segment to a singular topic and finishes with a story or experience with an emotional content. Emotions get attention. Unless the professor "earns" a student's interest from the prior 10-minutes, he likely has lost the student for the rest of the hour.
Vision trumps all senses. Pictures and words work best. With PowerPoint, that should be very few words. It is the experience that counts most.

This book highly interesting. I was hoping for more information applicable to artificial intelligence. However, Medina explains a lot about us, especially about learning and teaching.

—John Schuyler, November 2015