Table Of Content

Sold to NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER [email protected] UPDATED AND EXPANDED “Words leap off the page.” — USA Today br in rules 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School J O H N M E D I N A Includes link to Brain Rules film B o n u s m a t e r i a l o n l i n e www.brainrules.net Videos of parenting concepts Film featuring John Medina John medina hosts fun videos on talking take a lively, 45-minute tour of the in parentese, the cookie experiment, 12 original Brain rules for home, work, dealing with temper tantrums, and more. and school—from “exercise boosts Plus, take our parenting quiz. brain power” to “sleep well, think well.” Thanks for your support If you like Brain Rules, please share this link: https://gum.co/brainrules instead of forwarding the PDF. Thank you for supporting independent publishers! BRAIN RULES. Copyright © 2014 by John J. Medina. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. Requests for permission should be addressed to: Pear Press P.O. Box 70525 Seattle, WA 98127-0525 U.S.A. This book may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. For information, please visit www.pearpress.com SECOND EDITION Edited by Tracy Cutchlow Designed by Greg Pearson Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request. ISBN-13: 978-0-9832633-7-1 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America. To Joshua and Noah Gratitude, my dear boys, for constantly reminding me that age is not something that matters unless you are cheese. contents 12 Brain Rules i Introduction 1 Dumb things we do ~ The grump factor ~ Getting you in the loop ~ A brilliant survival strategy ~ Your amazing brain Exercise 17 Our brains love motion ~ The incredible test-score booster ~ Will you age like Jim or like Frank? ~ How oxygen builds roads for the brain Sleep 37 The brain doesn’t sleep to rest ~ Two armies at war in your head ~ How to improve your performance 34 percent in 26 minutes ~ Which bird are you? ~ Sleep on it! Stress 57 Stress is good, stress is bad ~ Villains and heroes in the toxic-stress battle ~ Why the home matters to the workplace ~ Marriage intervention for happy couples Wiring 83 Neurons slide, slither, and split ~ Experience makes the difference ~ Furious brain development not once, but twice ~ The Jennifer Aniston neuron Attention 103 Emotion matters ~ Why there is no such thing as multitasking ~ We pay great attention to threats, sex, and pattern matching ~ The brain needs a break! Memory 125 Memories are volatile ~ Details get splattered then pieced back together again ~ If you don’t repeat this within 30 seconds, you’ll forget it ~ Spaced repetition cycles are key to remembering Sensory integration 161 Lessons from a nightclub ~ How and why all of our senses work together ~ Multisensory learning means better remembering ~ What’s that smell? Vision 181 Playing tricks on wine tasters ~ You see what your brain wants to see, and it likes to make stuff up ~ Throw out your PowerPoint Music 199 Bringing a man back to life ~ Listening and language skills ~ Fine-tuning emotion detection and empathy ~ Music as therapy Gender 223 Sexing humans ~ The difference between little girl best friends and little boy best friends ~ Men favor gist when stressed; women favor details ~ A forgetting drug Exploration 243 Babies are great scientists ~ Exploration is aggressive ~ Monkey see, monkey do ~ Curiosity is everything acknowledgments 263 index 267