Medina - Brain Rules (Updated and Expanded): 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School

BRAIN RULES

BONUS MATERIAL

www.brainrules.net

Film featuring John Medina

Take a lively, 45-minute tour of the 12 original Brain Rules for home, work, and schoolfrom Exercise boosts brain power to Sleep well, think well.

Videos guide you through parenting concepts

John Medina hosts fun videos on speaking in parentese, the cookie experiment, dealing with temper tantrums, and more. Plus, take our parenting quiz.

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: the Brain Center for Applied Learning Research, at Seattle Pacific University, and the Talaris Research Institute, a nonprofit organization originally focused on how infants encode and process information. Medina lives in Seattle, Washington, with his wife and two boys.

BRAIN RULES. Copyright 2014 by John J. Medina.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. Requests for permission should be addressed to:

Pear Press

P.O. Box 70525

Seattle, WA 98127-0525

U.S.A.

This book may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. For information, please visit www.pearpress.com

SECOND EDITION

Edited by Tracy Cutchlow

Designed by Greg Pearson

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBN-13: 978-0-99603-260-5

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Joshua and Noah

Gratitude, my dear boys, for constantly reminding me that age is not something that matters unless you are cheese.

contents

Dumb things we do ~ The grump factor ~ Getting you in the loop ~ A brilliant survival strategy ~ Your amazing brain

Our brains love motion ~ The incredible test-score booster ~ Will you age like Jim or like Frank? ~ How oxygen builds roads for the brain

The brain doesnt sleep to rest ~ Two armies at war in your head ~ How to improve your performance 34 percent in 26 minutes ~ Which bird are you? ~ Sleep on it!

Stress is good, stress is bad ~ Villains and heroes in the toxic-stress battle ~ Why the home matters to the workplace ~ Marriage intervention for happy couples

Neurons slide, slither, and split ~ Experience makes the difference ~ Furious brain development not once, but twice ~ The Jennifer Aniston neuron

Emotion matters ~ Why there is no such thing as multitasking ~ We pay great attention to threats, sex, and pattern matching ~ The brain needs a break!

Memories are volatile ~ Details get splattered then pieced back together again ~ If you dont repeat this within 30 seconds, youll forget it ~ Spaced repetition cycles are key to remembering

Lessons from a nightclub ~ How and why all of our senses work together ~ Multisensory learning means better remembering ~ Whats that smell?

Playing tricks on wine tasters ~ You see what your brain wants to see, and it likes to make stuff up ~ Throw out your PowerPoint

Bringing a man back to life ~ Listening and language skills ~ Fine-tuning emotion detection and empathy ~ Music as therapy

Sexing humans ~ The difference between little girl best friends and little boy best friends ~ Men favor gist when stressed; women favor details ~ A forgetting drug

Babies are great scientists ~ Exploration is aggressive ~ Monkey see, monkey do ~ Curiosity is everything

survival

The human brain evolved, too.

exercise

Exercise boosts brain power.

sleep

Sleep well, think well.

stress

Stressed brains dont learn the same way.

wiring

Every brain is wired differently.

attention

We dont pay attention to boring things.

memory

Repeat to remember.

sensory integration

Stimulate more of the senses.

vision

Vision trumps all other senses.

music

Study or listen to boost cognition.

gender

Male and female brains are different.

exploration

We are powerful and natural explorers.

GO AHEAD AND MULTIPLY the number 8,388,628 x 2 in your head. Can you do it in a few seconds? There is a young man who can double that number 24 times in the space of a few seconds. He gets it right every time. There is a boy who can tell you the precise time of day at any moment, even in his sleep. There is a girl who can correctly determine the exact dimensions of an object 20 feet away. There is a child who at age 6 drew such vivid and complex pictures, some people ranked her version of a galloping horse over one drawn by da Vinci. Yet none of these children have an IQ greater than 70.