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

Brain Rule #5 states, “Every brain is wired differently” (84). Medina begins by considering Michael Jordan’s baseball career. The athlete took a brief break from a six-championship basketball career to pursue baseball, but he soon found that he could not distinguish himself as a professional baseball player. Medina suggests the reason may lie with how basketball changed Jordan’s brain. As humans learn new things, the physical structures of their brains change. The neurons split and grow to create new pathways. Research shows that specific lifestyles and careers translate to specific alterations in the brain. For example, successful violinists have more developed neural regions for fine motor movement.

The wiring begins with a nerve cell. Medina describes a nerve cell as appearing “like an uprooted tree” with roots on one end and branches on the other. Neurons grow and form new structures when learning occurs. The human brain undergoes major neural construction until one’s mid-twenties and continues to fine-tune until one’s mid-forties. Children’s brains experience massive construction until puberty when the brain then begins to focus attention on other neural regions. Brain development for children has a wide range of variations.

Medina describes a study in which scientists monitored a man’s neural activity using electrodes. They determined that a single neuron in his brain was responding to pictures of Jennifer Aniston and nothing else, suggesting that this neuron had only one function: identifying Jennifer Aniston. When the experiment was repeated with images of other celebrities, the scientists found that there were specific neurons for identifying Halle Berry and Bill Clinton. The structure of individuals’ brains is dependent upon their own experiences; if someone had never seen a picture of Jennifer Aniston, there would be no neuron dedicated to identifying her. Everyone’s brains are vastly different.

Medina suggests that this diversity reveals a problem with education that is designed to force children to learn in a regimented way. Schools expect students to reach certain cognitive markers by specific ages, but Medina offers that this is impossible due to the nature of neural variance. Smaller class sizes would enable teachers to provide more differentiated instruction to meet students’ needs.

Brain Rule #6 states, “We don’t pay attention to boring things” (103). Medina opens by describing an attempted robbery of his home. Although the experience was brief, he remembers every moment with vivid clarity. Humans remember more and display more accuracy of memory when they pay more attention to stimuli. Research reveals that humans reach peak interest at 10 minutes with steep decline. However, education still relies on an hour block model.

Attention is rewarded based on three principles: memory, interest, and awareness. Where humans focus their attention is often determined by memory. The brain uses previous experiences to determine whether attention is needed. One’s culture can influence one’s ability to perform certain tasks if those tasks are aligned with cultural memory. Humans are also more likely to pay attention to subjects or people they are interested in. Advertisers build campaigns that also suggest that humans develop interest in things they pay attention to. Humans need to be able to have an awareness of something through sensation to devote attention to it. Humans are more likely to pay attention to things that are emotionally charged, utilizing all three principles.

The first stage of attention is the arousal network. Most of the time, humans operate on a level of intrinsic alertness. They take in stimuli in a passive manner. When a stimulus breaks from the normal routine, the brain moves from intrinsic to phasic alertness. After the interrupting stimulus, the brain moves to the orienting network; in this stage, the brain attempts to gather more information. Finally, the brain moves to the executive network, which determines what course of action is needed. Humans are unable to multitask; human brains are designed to focus on singular concepts at one time. While a person may use automatic functions simultaneously, such as when a pianist plays many keys on a piano while reading music, they can only pay attention to one task or thought.

One of the practical applications Medina offers is to give one’s brain a break. Consistent pauses in learning can help recapture attention and learning. He also recommends paying attention to one thing at a time and chunking presentations into 10-minute segments. At the end of each segment, the presenter should try to gain the audience’s attention again by introducing something that hooks the listener. This hook should follow three principles: (1) It should connect to an emotion, (2) It should be relevant, and (3) It should connect ideas.