Review: Brain Rules, by John Medina

I picked up Brain Rules after a session in one of my education classes about new research into how people learn. I was interested in the topic, but didn't want to get a subscription to some neurological magazine, so I got on Amazon and looked through their selection before heading off to B&N with a short-list of what to look for.

Brain Rules won *by far* in the selection process. It's not at all "sciency" in the way that makes people like me either a) run screaming for the hills or b) start snoring. It's conversational, and split into mid-length sections which are again further split into topics. Examples of section topics include Wiring, Attention, Short- and Long-Term Memory, Sleep, Stress, Sensory Integration, and Gender. There are no illustrations, charts or graphs, except for the summary sections at the end of each chapter that helpfully remind you of the key points for each topic. It's got a Discovery Channel approach to science - fun, informative, and easily digestible. Each new section starts with a personal story (either Medina's or someone else's), and anecdotes are liberally sprinkled throughout, providing both examples and comic relief for complex ideas.

This style is right out of Rule #4: Attention - We Don't Pay Attention To Boring Things. Medina discusses the fact that audiences (classes, meeting attendees, etc) check out after ten minutes, and after that point you have to recapture them with another 'hook' or major point, using something that they can relate to personally, such as an amusing story or example. He applies this technique exceptionally well in the book; just as I started to drift away, get a little tired of brain information, he drew me back in with another tale, which was then followed with details about why the brain utilizes information more efficiently when it's encased in stories that the listener can become emotionally involved in, then he explained how the pathways and information storage work, and then suddenly I was back at the story again, seeing it all get tied together.

The other most interesting and applicable sections, for me, were sensory integration (if we learn something while smelling, say, roses, we will recall that same information at a much higher rate if roses are again present), vision (the brain will see what it thinks it should see, rather than what is actually there, and we will remember what we think we saw based on that subconscious judgment), and gender. I found this great nugget - women are much more genetically diverse than men, because the X chromosome has 1500 genes, whereas the Y has less than 100; therefore, women have 3000 chromosomes, and men have 1800. Since the X chromosome has the overwhelming majority of cognitive-development chromosomes, and women have two... you can take it from there. Medina isn't inferring that the female brain is better, just that the processing is completely different, and that's important from an instructional standpoint, but I got a lot of enjoyment out of it myself, anyway.

I have to recommend this book for parents, educators, and anyone who has a part in relaying any kind of information in a formalized way. Even if you are casually interested in how you might help your brain to age better, this would be a good read for you. It might make a good Xmas gift for a boss or teacher, too, since they're notoriously hard to buy for, because it's something applicable and different (ie not a mug or potpourri). I am not a huge scientific reader, but I enjoyed this book quite a bit. It was completely painless, and most of the time actually quite enjoyable.

Rating: five stars. Educational, jovial, mainstream presentation of otherwise potentially complex material