Review of Brain Rules by Dr. John Medina.
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Dr Medina, a developmental molecular biologist, has written a fun and engaging book about the brain that is based on his research. The rules are applicable to our everyday life, and in some cases, to our work and educational settings. This book sets the bar for the new wave of brain books that have entered the marked.

The rules are simple to understand and backed by solid research. There book starts with the evolutionary history of the brain. The human brain developed as we walked for miles across open savannahs. The human brain is built to adapt to change and focus on survival. Our brain was fed by movement and processing information. This means that we are great at ignoring the boring and focusing on changes in patterns. It also means the brain needs to adapt and learn to stay healthy.

The book discusses 12 different “rules” about the brain and how we can apply them. For example, because our brains were built work while we are walking and moving, exercise boosts brain power. So if we want to improve thinking skills, we need to move and get oxygen and glucose to the brain. Aerobic exercise twice a week halves the risk of general dementia and reduces the risk of Alzheimer’s by 60%. On the flip side, there is no greater anti-brain environment than the classroom and the cubicle.

Dr Medina points out that humans do not pay attention to boring things. We are better at seeing patterns and abstracting meaning than recording details. Tapping a person’s emotions helps them learn. People start to fade after 10 minutes in any lecture, and especially during a typical power point, so tap their emotions. Since vision trumps all other senses, we learn and remember best through pictures rather than words.

I loved reading that every brain is wired differently, and men and women are wired completely differently. I see this play out in the graduate courses I teach. Students have different learning styles. Men and women learn differently and are comfortable in different settings.

Finally, the book points out that we are powerful and natural explorers; a fact that is not utilized by academic or corporate settings. We design environments that limit exploration and movement. In fact, our lecture halls look exactly like the ones used in during the Renaissance. I would love to design a school that makes use of all of the rules in this book. I bet we would turn education around.

Read this book if you are in a leadership position, an educational setting, a training positions, or want to make your presentations more effective. Read this book if you want to have a “Mike Wallace” aging experience and be mentally vibrant into your 90’s.