How does the brain work?

How does the brain work? We have no idea. We are still in the very beginning stages of understanding most of the basics. From a researcher's perspective, it's a very exciting time to be a scientist, because you get to rummage around on the ground floor. But from an overall perspective, most of it is spooky.  

Let me give you some examples of how little we know about how the brain works. We know that you use the left-side of your brain for speech. Under normal circumstances, if you get a stroke on the left side of your brain, your speech can be greatly affected. Depending upon where you got the stroke, it could affect your ability to speak language or your ability to understand language.

There is a little six year old who suffered from something Sturge-Weber syndrome, a catastrophic brain disease. Because he had this disorder, the little guy had to have his entire left hemisphere removed. No left hemisphere, no language. That should have completely destroyed his language ability. Right?

Wrong!

Within two years, the little guy had regained his language abilities entirely. The right side of his brain seemed to have noticed there was a deficit and simply rewired itself to take over talking. Do we understand this?

We do not.

We do not understand how you learn a language of any kind. We don't know how you know how to walk. We don't know how you know how to read. You have a complete map of your body in your head. Actually, you have several maps of your body in your head. Some of them tell you where you are, some of them tell you how to move. One even tells you how to see. We don't know how they coordinate their information. We don't know how it knows its you - and  what, if anything, YOU are. Consciousness remains a slippery fish as ever.

So you ask me how the brain works. I am happy to repeat my answer. We have no idea.

Learn more at brainrules.net.

What have researchers learned since Brain Rules was published?

The field of brain science continues its explosive, propulsive revolution since Brain Rules was published. There are probably too many results to give a thorough account here, but I can certainly talk about some of the highlights.

One of the first is that a series of well-funded brain initiatives on both sides of the Atlantic. Groups of brain scientists are being recruited to be cartographers--examining the functional circuitry of the entire brain--at one of the smallest scales imaginable. The American version is called the BRAIN initiative, short for Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies. It's slated to cost several billion dollars and last 10 years. The European version is called the Human Brain Project. It's a really big effort to use supercomputers to reconstruct the micro-circuitry of the entire human brain

The hope is that such functional mapping expeditions will allow scientists to study at an incredible detail--and get new insights to cure diseases ranging from epilepsy and Parkinson's Disease to brain injuries such as Post Traumatic Stress and stroke.

Another series of leaps involve making brain-machine interfaces. These include harnessing the brain's electrical energy to drive physical devices. This is useful if you are interested in making brain-responsive prosthetics. Given the number of combat injuries the U.S. military has sustained since Brain Rules was written, this is a really exciting field. Progress in deep-brain stimulation technologies--this is where you insert electrical devices into the brain to solve problems ranging from depression to obsessive compulsive disorder, have made great strides.

How does the brain work?

How does the brain work? We have no idea. We are still in the very beginning stages of understanding most of the basics. From a researcher's perspective, it's a very exciting time to be a scientist, because you get to rummage around on the ground floor. But from an overall perspective, most of it is spooky.  

Let me give you some examples of how little we know about how the brain works. We know that you use the left-side of your brain for speech. Under normal circumstances, if you get a stroke on the left side of your brain, your speech can be greatly affected. Depending upon where you got the stroke, it could affect your ability to speak language or your ability to understand language.

There is a little six year old who suffered from something Sturge-Weber syndrome, a catastrophic brain disease. Because he had this disorder, the little guy had to have his entire left hemisphere removed. No left hemisphere, no language. That should have completely destroyed his language ability. Right?

Wrong!

Within two years, the little guy had regained his language abilities entirely. The right side of his brain seemed to have noticed there was a deficit and simply rewired itself to take over talking. Do we understand this?

We do not.

We do not understand how you learn a language of any kind. We don't know how you know how to walk. We don't know how you know how to read. You have a complete map of your body in your head. Actually, you have several maps of your body in your head. Some of them tell you where you are, some of them tell you how to move. One even tells you how to see. We don't know how they coordinate their information. We don't know how it knows its you - and what, if anything, YOU are. Consciousness remains a slippery fish as ever.

So you ask me how the brain works. I am happy to repeat my answer. We have no idea.

Visit brainrules.net to learn about the 12 things we know about how the brain works. These are the Brain Rules.

Theory of Mind

Theory of Mind is about as close to mind-reading as people can get. Most formal definitions go along the lines of the ability to discern the intentions, and motivations of yourself or another person. To develop a Theory of their Mind, hence the term. I think it has two components to it, especially if you're talking about one person trying to understand another's behavioral space. 

First, it's the ability to penetrate inside someone else's psychological interiors and understand the rewards and punishment systems inside that interior.Second, it's the ability to understand at all times that the rewards and punishment systems inside your head are not necessarily the same ones inside your neighbor's head. But he or she is not going to react like you do because he or she doesn't have the same rewards and punishment systems you do.

I joke in the book about calling the following saying John Medina's Second Law of marriage. Here's the saying: what is obvious to you is obvious to you.

I believe Theory of Mind skills are very important in the establishment and maintenance of social relationships. Necessary for success, though I would argue not sufficient. People often confuse it with empathy, but there are important distinctions. You can have terrific Theory of Mind skills and be a Mother Teresa. You read people insightfully and care about what you see. You can also be an SOB with it, too. You can read people insightfully and manipulate them in order to achieve some goal of yours. A dictator may be born with terrific Theory of Mind skills, but they use their talents to squash anybody that gets in their way.

The Performance Envelope

Watch the performance envelope video

Though we really don't know very much about how the brain processes information - we have yet to be able to determine why you know your name - to give just one flagrant example - we are not clueless about how the brain works.

We know about its evolutionary performance envelope, for example.

These are the conditions upon which the brain processes information in the best way. The most efficient way. The most accurate way.

The human brain appears to have been designed to solve problems related to surviving in an outdoor setting, in unstable meteorological conditions and to do so in near constant motion.

That's so important I'm going to say it again.

The human brain appears to have been designed to solve problems related to surviving in an outdoor setting, in unstable meteorological conditions and to do so in near constant motion.

Let me drill down on this a little bit.

Its important to understand the human brain is the world's most sophisticated survival organ. It's built to keep its owner alive long enough to pass its owner's genes onto the next generation - a decidedly very Darwinian thing to say. There's the survival stuff.

This magnificent survival organ was forged in an outdoor crucible, probably  and mostly in East Africa. For 99.987% of our time on the planet, we have lived in settings composed of natural elements, starting out in the savannah. We did it under conditions of increasing climatic instability - where our green, wet rainforest that used to inhabit our North African womb increasingly gave way to the not-as-green and not-as-wet savannah.

Because we were hunter-gatherers in an unstable ecological environment, we were moving around almost all of our waking hours. Some estimates put our movement at nearly 12 miles per day. Constant motion.

Those are the conditions under which our brain thrives. We have not escaped the blast radius of our evolutionary predilections forged over millions of years simply because we have - for the last few thousand - been able to live in sedentary cities.

Get the updated and expanded edition of John Medina's NYT bestseller Brain Rules. Learn more at www.brainrules.net

Why we should all take a nap in the afternoon

Why we should all take a nap in the afternoon

Watch the video

It turns out we need a nap during the afternoon. And historically, it seems we've always needed one. There is the Spanish concept of siesta. Italians call it riposo. If you go to China, you are likely many businesses shut down between 11:30 - 2:00 pm. They take a combination lunch and siesta before going back to work. Americans used to call it a power nap, but the research world calls this a nap zone.

We now know that a nap can profoundly influence productivity during the day. Mark Rosekind, a researcher who used to work for NASA - his job was training pilots - actually did an experiment. He allowed his pilots to take a 26-minute nap, then measured their productivity. He found that productivity increased 34% if he allowed his charges to take a nap. He has a really great quote "What other management strategy will improve people's performance 34% in just 26 minutes?" he is famous for saying. 

The research world calls this the nap zone. Other benefits have been found, mostly related to changes in memory performance. Both declarative and procedural memory tasks improve if you take a regular nap. One paper has the delightful title - and remember, this is a research paper "Good sleep, bad sleep! The role of daytime naps in healthy adults. 

I have personal experience with this, and I bet you do too. When I don't take a nap in the mid-afternoon, I typically fight being drowsy from about 1:30 on. If I do take a nap in the mid-afternoon, just a small one, I suddenly get a burst of energy and an alertness that allows me to be productive the entire day. I am pleased to say this anecdotal information has strong empirical support.

Learn more about the importance of sleep

Get the updated and expanded edition of John Medina's NYT bestseller Brain Rules

John Medina Video Interview

John Medina talks with Sixty&Me about the importance of exercise, managing stress, sleep, visual learning and how to use tricks and tips to address and reduce memory loss. He explains how understanding the brain can be applied to education and business. Dr. Medina explains the difference between simple forgetfulness and more serious brain disease and also surprises us with a 13 ‘rule’ that he would add if he was updating his best-selling book – power of nostalgia to improve brain function.

The John Medina Interview Roundup

Just because Brain Rules and Brain Rules for Baby have been published doesn't mean that Dr. John Medina has stopped educating the public with his scientifically backed insights on how our brains work. Dr. Medina has kept busy by doing a variety of interviews for the wide audiences of readers who are interested in learning more about the Brain Rules. Here are the links to a few of them:

-At the Positive Business Blog, Dr. Medina discusses how using our brains better leads to doing better business--especially when it comes to Rule #8: stress.

-Stream or download Dr. Medina's interview with independent business radio station BFM 89.9.

-Business blogger Bob Morris sits down with Dr. Medina.

-Watch Dr. Medina's conversation with Microsoft's Mary Cullinane at the Innovative Education Forum.

-Listen to Dr. Medina's in-depth interview about a set of Brain Rules that are especially handy for teachers.

Brain Rules for Educators

As anybody who has read Brain Rules knows, Dr. John Medina has a few bones to pick with how the traditional classroom is structured. If Dr. Medina were in charge, a typical day at school would be transformed in a myriad of ways that would increase levels of efficiency, permanence, and, well, fun while learning. Fortunately, educators are listening to Dr. Medina as well, and they're starting to share their thoughts with the rest of us:

-At The Huffington Post, Tom Vander Ark hypothesizes what a Brain Rules-inspired classroom would look like.

-Watch Dr. Medina's interview about which "brain rules" are myths and which ones are backed by scientific evidence in his interview with Mary Cullinane at the Microsoft Innovative Education Forum.

-Listen to Dr. Medina's in-depth discussion of Brain Rules for Teachers from the "Leaps and Bounds for Teachers" series from Berklee Faculty Development.

-You don't need to transform the entire educational system from the bottom up in order for the message Brain Rules to take a positive effect in your classroom: watch high school wrestling coach Mike Hagerty give his unsolicited praise detailing how Brain Rules has influenced his teaching.

Have you figured out new ways to integrate Brain Rules in your classroom? Don't hesitate to share and start a discussion with other educators at the Brain Rules Facebook page.

Raising a toast to the human brain

John Medina discusses Brain Rules with Warren Etheredge at The High Bar.

Brain Rules for Meetings

Molecular biologist John Medina, speaker and author of the best-selling book Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School, didn't set out to become a media star. But he got so fed up with encountering myths about the brain - that you use only 10 percent of it, for example, or that there are right- and left- brain personalities - that he once threw a magazine across a seat on an airplane. (The flight, he notes, wasn't full.) "So I decided to write Brain Rules," Medina said, "as an attempt to say, ‘Look, here's what we do know, here's what we don't know, here are a few things you can try that might have an application in the business world - and the meetings world as well.'"

Not that Brain Rules will tell you how the brain operates. "We don't know squat about how the brain works," said Medina, who has focused on brain research for nearly three decades. He added: "I don't know how you know how to pick up a glass of water and drink it. But we do know the conditions that [the brain] operates best in, even if we don't know all the ins and outs of that operation."

Which of the 12 Brain Rules has the most impact on meetings?
Well, probably, the biggest one would have to be about attentional states. This rule is very simple: People don't pay attention to boring things. So if you really want to have a lousy meeting, make sure it's boring. If you want to have a lousy classroom, make sure it's boring. And if you want to vaccinate against the types of things that really do bore the mind, we have some understanding of that.

So how do you design a good meeting?
Here are the top three "brain gadgets" that probably have a bearing on the question. First, the human brain processes meaning before it processes detail. Many people, when they put meetings together, actually don't even think about the meaning of what it is they're saying. They just go right to the detail. If you go to the detail, you've got yourself a bored audience. Congratulations.
Second, in terms of attentional states, we're not sure if this is brain science or not, but certainly in the behavioral literature, you've got 10 minutes with an audience before you will absolutely bore them. And you've got 30 seconds before they start asking the question, "Am I going to pay attention to you or not?" The instant you open your mouth, you are on the verge of having your audience check out. And since most people have been in meetings - 90 percent of which have bored them silly - they already have an immune response against you, particularly if you've got a PowerPoint slide up there.

How do you then hold attention?
This is what you have to do in 10 minutes. You have to pulse what I just said - the meaning before detail - into it. I call it a hook. At nine minutes and 59 seconds, you've got to give your audience a break from what it is that you've been saying and pulse to them once again the meaning of what you're saying.

What is the third "brain gadget"?
The brain cycles through six questions very, very quickly. Question No. 1 is "Will it eat me?" We pay tons of attention to threat. The second question is "Can I eat it?" I don't know if you have ever watched a cooking show and have loved what they are cooking, but you pay tons of attention if you think there's going to be an energy resource. Question No. 3 is highly Darwinian. The whole reason why you want to live in the first place is to project your genes to the next generation - that means sex. So Question No. 3 is "Can I mate with it?" And Question No. 4 is "Will it mate with me?"

It turns out we pay tons of attention to - it actually isn't sex per se, it's reproductive opportunity. [It is also] hooked up to the pleasure centers of your brain - the exact same centers you use when you laugh at something. Oddly enough, I think that's one of the reasons why humor can work. If you can pop a joke or at least tell an interesting story, it's actually inciting those areas of the brain that are otherwise devoted to sex. You don't become aroused by listening to a joke. I'm saying those areas of the brain can be co-opted. You can utilize them, and a good speaker knows how to do that.

What are Questions 5 and 6?
"Have I seen it before?" and "Have I never seen it before?" We are terrific pattern matchers. There is an element of surprise that comes when patterns don't match, but the reason why that happens is because we are trying to match patterns all the time.

Is there a Brain Rule that addresses whether you should try to control the use of laptops and phones during a meeting session?
I have this rule response, based on data, and then I have a visceral response, also based on data. In other words, I'm about ready to tell you a contradiction. Are you ready?

Yes, I am.
Alrighty. I do believe what you can show is that there are attentional blinks. The brain actually is a beautiful multitasker, but the attentional spotlight, which you use to pay attention to things, [is not]. You can't listen to a speaker and type what they are saying at the same time.

What you can show in the laboratory is that you get staccato-like attentional blinks. Just like you come up for air: You look at the speaker, then when you're writing, you cannot hear what the speaker is saying. Then you come up for air and hear the speaker again. So you're flipping back and forth between those two, and your ability to be engaged to hear what a speaker is saying is necessarily fragmented.
At the same time, if your speaker is boring, you could have checked out anyway. So you see, in many ways it depends upon the speaker.

How so?
If the speaker is really compelling and is clear and is emotion- ally competent, and has gone through those six questions, letting you come up for air every 10 minutes, I've actually watched audiences put their laptops away just to pay attention.

I have a style that is purposely a little speedier. And the rea- son why is that it produces a tension that says, "I need to pay attention closely to him or I'm going to lose what he's saying." I don't make it so fast that it's unintelligible - at least I hope I don't. But I do make it fast, and occasionally I see comments that say, "Great speaker, but you know, you were too freaking fast."

This interview originally appeared in the Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA) magazine Convene.