The 10 Minute Rule

So I ask this question in every college course I teach: “Given a class of medium interest, not too boring and not too exciting, when do you start glancing at the clock, wondering when the class will be over?” There is always some nervous shuffling, a few smiles, then a lot of silence. Eventually someone blurts out:

“Ten minutes, Dr. Medina.”

“Why 10 minutes?” I inquire.

“That’s when I start to lose attention. That’s when I begin to wonder when this torment will be over.” The comments are always said in frustration. A college lecture is still about 50 minutes long.

Peer-reviewed studies confirm my informal inquiry: Before the first quarter-hour is over in a typical presentation, people usually have checked out. If keeping someone’s interest in a lecture were a business, it would have an 80 percent failure rate. What happens at the 10-minute mark to cause such trouble? Nobody knows. The brain seems to be making choices according to some stubborn timing pattern, undoubtedly influenced by both culture and gene. This fact suggests a teaching and business imperative: Find a way to arouse and then hold somebody’s attention for a specific period of time.

"10 Minute Rule" slide with audio

To learn more about how Brain Rules relates to presentations, check out Garr Reynolds's Brain Rules for Presenters slideshow. Garr is the author of Presentation Zen.

Brain Rules for Presenters

View more slideshows:
Exercise
Sleep
Stress
Gender

Fishing for Genetic Links in Autism

This is the second installment in a 2-part series that addresses approaches to understanding the molecular underpinnings of autism. Learn more about "Brain Rules" here.

In my January column (“Fishing Expeditions and Autism: A Big Catch for Genetic Research?” Psychiatric Times, January 2009), I described the great difficulties researchers face characterizing the genetic basis of the disease. Complexities range from trying to establish a stable diagnostic profile to making sense of the few isolated mutations that show clear associations (either with disease or syndrome variants).

Using the metaphor of a fishing net, I discussed 2 overall research strategies that geneticists commonly use to catch these elusive sequences of interest. One strategy is to cast nets that act like large purse seiners to collect many sequences in a single (and usually quite expensive) effort. The other strategy is akin to dropping a single fishing line into the genetic waters to see if anything “bites.” In Part 1, I described one particularly successful strategy that snagged a large number of useful sequences.

Here, the focus narrows: I will not describe the isolation of many sequences, but rather only one. Our “catch” is called MeCP2, a gene whose mutations can give rise to a wide spectrum of related postnatal neurodevelopmental disorders—including autism spectrum disorders. I will start with some background regions about gene regulation, move to the biological functions of MeCP2, and then focus on studies in animal models that provide tantalizing hints about the origins of autistic behavior. My goal is to show that research progress in autism is a continuum of efforts, ranging from large projects with lots of identifiable sequences to small projects that focus on the properties of single genes.

Download the PDF of the complete article

Related:
- Theory of Mind

Fishing Expeditions and Autism: A Big Catch for Genetic Research?

This article first appeared in the Psychiatric Times. Learn about Brain Rules here.

I am a fan of the television show Deadliest Catch—a documentary series that follows the travails of deep-sea fishermen in the Bering Sea. (Actually, it is mostly about deep crab fishing.) Living in Seattle, I have actually seen some of the boats filmed on the show.

The variety of equipment the fishermen use to capture sea life is extraordinary. Trawlers and purse seiners—boats that use long-line nets and gill nets—make it possible to catch thousands of fish at a time. I am constantly struck by the comparison between these large, industrial efforts and the “weekend” fishermen that Seattle also has by the thousands. The amateurs use simple fishing poles to catch one fish at a time. Where the Deadliest Catch boats are based, you can often see both styles side by side.

I mention these 2 contrasting styles of fish harvesting because there is a comparison that I would like to make in this month’s column and in the next. It is not much of a stretch to say that isolating the genes responsible for complex behavioral disorders can seem like fishing expeditions (complete with analogous net comparisons). There are giant efforts that deploy the molecular equivalent of purse seiners designed to snag large groups of genes that share a potential involvement in whichever presenting behavior is under study. These efforts can be contrasted with technologies that use the equivalent of small fishing poles, the goal of which is not to catch large, glittering groups of nucleotides but single genes, one at a time.

In this column and the next, we will tackle one of the most slippery issues in the behavioral sciences: the genetic basis of autism.

Download the PDF of the complete article

Is There a Gene for Postpartum Depression?

This article first appeared in the Psychiatric Times. Learn about Brain Rules here.

The transition to parenthood is filled to the brim with behavioral extremes. Parents who are otherwise emotionally stable are in one moment thrilled and happier than they have ever been and confused and fearful the next. A friend of mine once theorized that these reactions occur because “parenting is an amateur sport” played by persons who are highly motivated to do the right thing but who often have no idea what that right thing is.

For some couples, the transition to parenthood is not filled with this rich mixture of great perplexity and great joy. For them, parenthood is mostly filled with sadness and even despair. Postpartum depression was originally coined to describe this experience in the mother, although it is becoming clear that fathers can experience very similar emotions too.

Is there a molecular basis for postpartum depression—at least for the type that mothers experience? Recent findings, which I describe here, may answer this question. First, we will focus on several background behavioral and molecular issues and then move on to some interesting data about births in genetically manipulated laboratory animals.

Download the PDF to read the complete article

Get brain in gear for new year

People sometimes make New Year's resolutions for the wrong reason.

John Medina knows a lot about how people operate. He doesn't make resolutions, but he does have some advice for anyone who wants to have a better life in 2009. Take care of your brain.
--Read Jerry Large's column in the Seattle Times

--Excerpt below from Compete.com interview

Given the 12 Brain Rules, what advice do you have for marketers?

Three pieces of advice:
1. The brain is not interested in learning. And it is not interested in buying. It is interested in surviving.

2. It fleshes out this pre-occupation by creating and responding to two internal motivations, both strikingly Darwinian. The brain is interested in anything that will provide it a benefit. And it will do whatever it can to avoid pain.

3. Both motivations are related to a single goal: passing our genes onto the next generation. That sounds like it all comes down to sex, but it really comes down to endurance – in terms of millions of years. We barely survived our womb in the Serengeti, but we did so because of the overwhelming dictatorship of these twin interior forces.

H.M., a man with no hippocampus, dies at 82

Each time Suzanne Corkin met H.M. during one of his visits to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she would ask him if they had met before. He would smile and say yes, and when she asked him where he would reply, “In high school.” They did not actually meet until he was in his late 30s, but they worked together for nearly five decades, and the last time they met he still failed to recognise her. The most she ever elicited in him was a sense of familiarity.
Economist Obit

John Medina explains how H.M. helped us understand how memory works (watch on You Tube).

Brain Rules in HD

Watch the introduction to the Brain Rules DVD below in HD (or here). The DVD is included with every hardcover book.



Below is the exercise segment in HD. You can also view it here. To learn more about how exercise boosts brain power, check out the exercise tutorial.

Painting Neural Circuitry With a Viral Brush: Are the Neighbors Green?

Note: This is the second installment of a two-part series describing the use of engineered rabies viruses in the elucidation of neural circuits. These columns appear in the Psychiatric Times. Learn about Brain Rules here.

In last month’s column (“Painting Neural Circuitry With a Viral Brush,” Psychiatric Times, October 2008), I used Michelangelo’s famous fresco, “Hand of God Giving Life to Adam” on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel as a metaphor to introduce a series of technologies that have allowed researchers to map the complex interactions of neural connections in continuously functioning neural tissues. This technology promises to deliver accurate synaptic associations—one finger to another—at a very high level of resolution.

These extraordinary cartographic techniques involve exploiting the natural ability of the rabies virus to set up productive infections in neural tissues. For simplicity’s sake, we are examining the genetic manipulation of hypothetical “Neuron A” and its reaction to a previously engineered rabies virus. Although the manipulations to the virus are complex, using the data obtained, researchers seek to answer a simple, seemingly innocuous question: Are the neighbors green?

In case you do not have last month’s column handy, let me briefly review the life cycle of the rabies virus and reexamine the reengineered virus and Neuron A. We can then turn directly to the data.

Rabies virus

As mentioned last month, the rabies virus has several biological aspects that make it an ideal delivery device for working with living neural tissues. Once inside a nerve cell, the virus sets up a manufacturing site to create more viruses, like any typical virus. At maturity, however, these progenies jump to neighboring neurons, which allows the virus to spread along specific neural routes. This life cycle is handy if you are interested in synaptic connections throughout the body.

The infection can start in the peripheral nervous system and then jump the stout molecular border that separates it from the CNS. (That is why a bite anywhere on the body can result in a catastrophic brain infection.) If one could find a way to follow the virus, one could identify the routes by which it travels.

Aspects of this jumping ability were exploited in the circuit-mapping experiments we are about to review. Both virus and cell had to be genetically manipulated in 3 different ways for the experiment to work.

Download the PDF to read the complete article

McGurk Effect

Is he saying "ba ba" or "da da"? It's called the McGurk Effect. If you can't see the video, watch it on YouTube.

Brain Rules BNET Podcast

Check out the 8-minute Brain Rules podcast at BNET.com

Other News:

Brain Rules Book Group in Second Life - a weekly (every Monday) gathering for the month of October

Boing Boing review