Introduction
I have always been fascinated by how our environment effects how our mind works; so when I was given the opportunity to choose a book to read and review, Brain Rules: Thriving at Work, Home, and School by John Medina caught my attention. Developmental molecular biologist Dr. John Medina, wrote this book to help people explore what learning and other aspects of mental performance look like if they complied with the latest findings in brain research.
In Brain Rules, Dr. John Medina, shares his lifelong interest in how the brain sciences might influence the way we teach our children and the way we live and work. Each chapter, Dr. Medina describes what scientists know about how our brains work, a brain rule, and then offers transformative ideas for our daily lives. Brain Rules a great resource to start discovering on how the brain functions and introduces the reader to 12 things neuroscience has discovered about how the brain works. The 12 rules include: Exercise, Sleep, Stress, Wiring, Attention, Memory, Sensory Integration, Vision, Music, Gender, and Exploration.
About the Author
Dr. John Medina works as a developmental molecular biologist focusing on the genes and genetic developments and disorders of the brain. He works primarily biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry and research related to mental health. Medina is the founding director of two research facilities: The Talaries Research Institute and the Brain Center for Applied Learning. Dr. Medina has had a life long interest in how the mind organizes information and how the mind reacts to that information.
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Summary of Content
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. Medina emphasis that the brain is a product of evolution and he covers 12 brain functions and explains what goes on in the brain when theses functions take place. Having a better understanding of how the brain works means we can use the brain the way it was designed to be used. In this summary, I’ll briefly touch on 2 of different functions that stood out to me and recap some of the points Medina makes about the brain and how it relates to exercise, sleep, and stress.
Exercise
According to scientists they believe that humans walked at least 12 miles a day for thousands of years. These scientist suggest that the human brain has developed and evolved while people were on the move. They believe that movement is a human beings natural state and the human brain would have near have grown if humans had remained in a stagnate state. This likely explains why there are so many positive brain-related benefits that are directly caused by exercise. Medina suggest that regular exercise increases our energy levels, cognitive performance such as memory, reasoning, and problem solving (just to name a few). It has also been shown to decrease our risk of disease, such as decreasing our likelihood of getting dementia and Alzheimer’s by at least half and significantly lowers your chances of getting cancer.
Exercise is beneficial to our brain’s health. Exercise increase the body consumption of oxygen making it readily available to the brain while clearing out some of the molecular waste that has built up inside our bodies and our brains. Exercise releases serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine -which are all linked to improving mood and reducing stress. Increasing our feeling of well-being. Surprisingly is only takes a small increase in exercise to obtain these benefits. A 30 minute walk 2-3 times per week can cause dramatic improvement in all the areas mentioned above.
Sleep
When you think about sleeping there it is not a uniform structure. Everyone has their own sleep pattern on when they go to bed and when they wake up to begin their day. The time of night a person should go to bed and the number of hours of sleep required varies from person to person. Some people may only need to sleep at night, while others are better served by mixing a mid-afternoon nap into their day.
But as most of us know sleep is incredibly important. A lack of sleep can increase stress, messes with your metabolism, decrease your cognitive performance (it hinders your focus, memory, and ability to make decisions/think logically) and can make you moody. There is no exact science on exactly how sleeps helps in all these areas. It is tempting to think that sleep gives our brain’s a chance to rest, but in fact our brains are more active when asleep. 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. The neural connections that were made during the day, strengthened during sleep, helping the brain to learned from our experiences and then become more deeply ingrained into our brains. If our sleep is interrupted, this process can get disturbed and this cognitive reinforcing is not as effective.
Conclusion
In addition to the sections mentioned above, this book has whole chapters devoted to how the brain functions in terms of memory, survival, exploration, vision, and sensory integration. Medina also takes time in each chapter to give suggestions on how to integrate what we know about the brain to improve schools and the workplace. People curious about how the brain works and how that knowledge can be used to improve these areas will certainly want to pick up a copy of Brain Rules today or visit https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zSBPZT1PD9M
Reference:
- Medina, J. (2014). Brain Rules, Updated and Expanded. Seattle, USA: Pear Press.
