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

“If you wanted to create an education environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you probably would design something like a classroom.”

Throughout the work, Medina claims that the modern educational system does not reflect neuroscience. This aligns with the theme Neuroscience and Education. In this passage, he claims that schools are designed in direct opposition to how brains function. At the end of each chapter, Medina provides ways in which schools can alter the blueprint to capitalize on how brains have evolved.

“If all you do is walk several times a week, your brain will benefit.”

Exercise reflects The Importance of Simple Habits. Brain Rules emphasizes small changes to daily routine that can improve cognitive functioning and take advantage of brain processes. In this chapter, Medina explores how even walking for 20 minutes a few times a week can produce lasting effects on the brain and body.

“Civilization, while giving us such seemingly forward advances as modern medicine and spatulas, also has had a nasty side effect. It gives us more opportunities to sit on our butts.”

This quotation represents the alternative side to the advancement produced by evolution. While evolution increased human capacity and cognitive performance, it also allowed humans to establish an environment that rewards sedentary lifestyles. Medina argues that human bodies are desperate to return to pre-civilization movement. While evolution played an important role in increasing the functionality of the human brain, it also contributed to its decline.

“When you dig into the data on humans, what you find is not remarkable uniformity but remarkable individuality.”

While Medina explains how to capitalize on neuroscience, he recognizes the spectrum of individuality of the human mind. In the introduction, he begins by citing various individuals with unique brains who can tell the exact time without a clock and determine the precise dimensions of faraway objects. Within the uniformity of the human mind, there is a wealth of variation. While humans learned to adapt to the many variations in their environments, they also developed their own plethora of forms.

“Teachers are just as likely to be late chronotypes as their students. Why not put them together?”

This quotation represents one of the connections Medina makes between Neuroscience and Education. He argues that educators can utilize brain science to create educational structures that are more effective. In this model, teachers and students who are late chronotypes start later in the day, while earlier chronotypes start earlier in the day.

“Most of the survival issues we faced in our first few million years did not take long to settle.”

Medina argues that humans are not hardwired for prolonged stress. The evolutionary history of humankind is riddled with short-term stressors: a predator, change in climate, or physical injury. Modern stressors last longer and, therefore, have a much higher damaging effect on the brain and body. This connects to the theme The Evolution of the Brain.

“These days, our stresses are measured not in moments with mountain lions, but in hours, days, and sometimes months with hectic workplaces, screaming toddlers, and money problems. Our system isn’t built for that.”

Understanding The Evolution of the Brain can provide ideas for capitalizing on its hardwired functioning. However, it can also reveal how human brains have yet to adapt to contemporary life. Medina argues that human brains were not designed to handle the vast amounts of stress that carry on for extended periods of time that have become a hallmark of modern existence. By knowing that their brains are not designed to withstand these prolonged stretches of stress, humans can engage with the practical habits Medina offers to help reset the system.

“Given that stress can powerfully affect learning, one might predict that children living in high-anxiety households would not perform as well academically as kids living in more nurturing households. That is exactly what studies show.”

There is a strong connection between learning and stress. Students who experience high levels of stress at home are at a disadvantage at school. Medina provides many changes that schools could make to assist parents and students and to improve levels of stress for young learners. Medina stretches his study of Neuroscience and Learning outside the school walls to show how all experiences impact cognitive functioning and learning.

“The stability of the home is completely ignored, even though it is one of the greatest predictors of future success at school.”

Medina’s examination of the impact of stress on student performance reveals that stress at home can have many damaging effects for students. He argues that schools need to develop programs that help alleviate problems at home, bringing together the fields of Neuroscience and Education.

“Historically, people have done their best work—sometimes world-changing work—in their first few years after joining the workforce.”

At the end of each chapter, Medina applies his research to real life settings to show how neuroscience can be used in practical application. This connects to the theme The Importance of Simple Habits. Medina argues that business can do more to create practices that reflect scientific research. In this passage, he reflects on how companies could support workers during their most productive years by eliminating stress and providing access to therapy.

“What you do in life physically changes what your brain looks like.”

No two human brains are identical. Even twins have enough variation in experiences to have completely different brains. Medina explains that a person’s experiences alter the physical structure of the brain; each time someone learns something new, they create new neural pathways. This is another component of The Evolution of the Brain.

“We expect that kids should be able to read by age 6. Yet students of the same age show a great deal of intellectual variable. Studies show that about 10 percent of students do not have brains sufficiently wired to read at that age.”

As Medina considers Neuroscience and Education, he shows the disconnection between what research says and what schools practice. He argues that the markers schools have set for cognitive development rarely account for the spectrum of individual wiring in children’s brains. Medina advocates for educational systems that differentiate instruction and allow children to develop at their own pace. Smaller class size is one suggestion for facing the challenges of differentiation.

“The brain is a sequential processor, unable to pay attention to two things at the same time.”

Medina argues that the human brain is not capable of multitasking. Yet, most of modern society praises and rewards multitasking. Schools and businesses are designed to encourage and require multitasking, and phones and devices inflate the problem. Medina asserts that relating Neuroscience and Education can reveal important implications for how schools are structured. He recommends schools to break up information into 10-minute sections and focus on recapturing attention at the end of each section. Learning should be centralized on single stimuli and alleviate distractors that might divert attention.

“People usually forget 90 percent of what they learn in a class within 30 days. And the majority of this forgetting occurs within the first few hours after class.”

Memory plays an important role in The Evolution of the Brain. The mind sifts through the input of information and determines what is worth encoding and storing. Medina argues that this has important implications for Neuroscience and Education. By understanding how little information humans retain and what makes the brain think information is important enough to store, educators can translate neuroscience into practical strategies for teaching. 

“Deliberately re-expose yourself to information if you want to retrieve it later. Deliberately re-expose yourself to information more elaborately if you want to remember more of the details. Deliberately re-expose yourself to the information more elaborately and in fixed, spaced intervals if you want the retrieval to be as vivid as possible.”

This quotation represents The Importance of Simple Habits. Humans can make intentional choices to help them remember and learn new things. Medina explains that people need to confront learning repeatedly to process and store it. Elaborate coding means connecting the concept to other ideas and sensations. By revisiting the information repeatedly over time, individuals have a better chance of retaining the learning. These strategies are empowering; they mean that humans can take active charge of their own learning and find ways to build their cognitive strength.

“The world is multisensory and has been for a very long time. Our East African crib did not unveil its sensory information one sense at a time during our development.”

Sensory integration is another simple habit that humans can employ individually or in their larger institutions of learning. Medina attributes the importance of senses to learning to The Evolution of the Brain. Human ancestors were dependent upon their senses to ensure survival. This means that sensory information is directly connected to what human brains think is important and worth attention. By integrating senses into learning, humans are more likely to retain the information. 

“Many researchers think multisensory experiences work because they are more elaborate.”

In Chapter 6, Medina explains that making memories more elaborate helps to codify them. This means showing how ideas connect to one another, especially real-life experiences and emotions. Senses and emotions are linked in many ways. Humans are wired to smell hormones that suggest others are fearful or excited. They can visually see when others are upset. Adding sensory integration to learning helps to create various connections to learning. 

“At this very moment, while reading this text, you are perceiving parts of this page that do not exist.”

Medina explains that the human brain is good at filling in the details. Everything that humans see is a hallucination, an approximation by a brain that has taken into billions of bits of sensory information and then reformed it to its best ability to create experience. The brain has the remarkable ability to fill in the blanks, especially the blind spot—an area of the cortex that all humans have. 

“Vision means so much to us because most of the major threats to our lives in the savannah were apprehended visually.”

Human brains of seeing individuals rely heavily on sight; Medina estimates that over half the brain is dedicated to visual sensation. This is a result of The Evolution of the Brain. Humans living in the savannah were visually dependent. They needed to notice everything around them at all times and make predictions about what they were seeing. The human emphasis on sight is an evolutionary leftover. Knowing this has useful applications for learning. Humans can take advantage of their inclination by incorporating visual stimuli into learning. 

“It is a surprisingly well-established fact that music can induce hormonal changes. These changes result in alterations of mood.”

Integrating music and learning is another way that Medina emphasizes The Importance of Simple Habits. He reminisces about driving with his wife to a new place. As he tries to find his way around a new city, he grows increasingly frustrated and stressed. Noticing his cues, his wife puts a CD in the car’s CD player with music that she knows he will find calming. The music does exactly that. Medina suggests that humans can take advantage of their connection with music to help alleviate stress and boost memory.

“Characterizing gender-specific behaviors has a long and mostly troubled history. Institutions holding our best minds aren’t immune.”

Medina explains that he was unsure about including a chapter on the difference between men and women’s brains; he recognizes that scientists have a history of subjugating women by using illogical arguments. Medina recognizes that scientific understanding about the variations in men and women’s brains cannot escape a cultural component. It is difficult to determine those places where culture has shaped the brain and vice versa. 

“In our evolutionary history, having a team that could understand both the gist and details of a given stressful situation helped us conquer the world.”

Medina reveals that having some brains that are hardwired for recognizing the bigger picture of events and other brains that focus on the details provides an evolutionary advantage. This may be why men’s brains are more likely to notice the gist of an experience while women are more likely to pick up on the smaller details and emotional aspects of the event. Medina argues that this provides a map for moving forward. By creating teams that utilize both men and women’s unique cognitive talents, humans can engage in more robust problem-solving. 

“All babies gather information by actively testing their environment, much as a scientist would.”

Medina shows how the brain functioning of infants is strikingly similar to that of adults. Babies take in sensory information from the world around them and perform experiments to find out more. Humans engage in this behavior all throughout their lives. Research reveals that human brains continue to make new cells all throughout one’s life and that those cells are malleable. In short, they are lifelong learners.