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ENG1101 D340 English Composition I, SPR2015
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Post your beginning of class summary of John Medina’s Brain Rules, Introduction as a comment to this post.
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John Medina introduce us to 12 things about how the brain works. In other words, he call these Brain Rules. For each rule, he present the science and then offer ideas for how the rule might apply to our daily lives, especially at work and school. I compare him to Michael O’shea’s writing style because their enthusiasm for the brain is an amazing thing as both express. Moreover, John Medina’s writing style is multiple so we don’t get bored. I like his information about the brain that is a database and that the brain were built to survive. In my mind, John Medina is beyond Gary Marcus and Michael O’shea writing styles because in general he express in all the way possible to the reader understand and feel comfortable. Another important thing that he talk was about our ancestor meaning that in that time their communicate by symbols and sounds making the brain develops as the beginning of life. Therefore, Medina’s writing styles is multiple and at the same time is unique.
Medina’s Brain Rules Introduction basically tells us how our brain works. For us human to survive, our brain evolves because due to the ‘many environments’ we live in. The brain is the unique thing on earth because our brain is the most sophisticated information-transfer system on earth. We can’t even explain how our brain works because our brain is mysterious. But I do believe each brain have special talents from what I read from Medina’s Brain Rules Introduction. For example; some people can muti-task and some can draw powerful pictures at age 6. Not all of us can do that, probably only a few in the world can do that and that’s what make each of our brain unique.
Justin Echevarria
“Brain Rules” written by John Medina, he talks how the brain is used. He doesn’t get into to much details like what part of the brain is used, but explains how the human brain evolved over time for survival purposes. This is interesting cause the we as people still today use our brain to survive; for example, every nation creates some type of strategy to win to conquer or defend their land/people. I believe that the brain is constantly going to change and build new ways of survival because things will change and i truly believe people can evolve overtime.
John Medina introduce us to 12 ways the brain works, each more unique than the other. Medina calls these the Brain Rules, for each of the rules Medina explains theory behind it and how us as humans use it in everyday life, during school and/or school. Medina is indulged in all his theories and fascinated just like O’Shea is as well, this also makes it interesting because Medina doesn’t do it all in one he has multiple readings and the reader does not lose interest. Medina brings up very good points, all points I can agree on. Another theory that is interesting to me is our ancestors communicated with symbols and sounds which then fueled our brains, which later on helped us develop our brains.
Summary of Medina’s Brain Rules, Introduction
Reading the introduction to Medina’s brain rules has been a captivating time for me. Why? For many years I’ve wondered about the way the brain works but I couldn’t connect the dots. Thankfully, by reading the introduction to Medina’s 12 brain rules of the 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and school I am now capable of connecting most of the dots. Medina was very clear and very positive when he spoke about the brain’s survival strategies; not just because they are part of ancient history but how they give us real insight into how humans acquire knowledge.
In Brain Rules Introduction, John Medina introduces us to 12 things we know about how the brain works. He calls these “brain rules”. We know very little of how our brain actually works. If we ever fully understood how the human brain knew how to pick up a glass of water, it would be a major achievement. Though we know very little about how it works, our evolutionary history tells us that “the brain appears to be designed to solve problems related to surviving in an unstable outdoor environment, and to do so in nearly constant motion. He says that we are not used to sitting at a desk for eight hours a day. From an evolutionary perspective our brains developed while we walked around 12 miles a day. That is why exercise boost brain power. It has been proven that people who exercise regularly outperform people who don’t.
Another thing I found interesting in this chapter was that as our brains evolved, our heads did too. Both our brains and heads were getting bigger, and that was a problem because the birth canal can only be so wide. The solution was to give birth while our heads was still small enough to fit through the birth canal. Our long childhood gave the brain time to finish outside the womb. This is why humans have such a long childhood, compared with other mammals, which usually reach adulthood within a few months.
Brain rules seems like a very easy book to read. He don’t use any references in the book, and he constantly jumps between topics. He says that people don’t pay attention to boring things, and that you’ve got seconds to grab some one’s attention and only 10 minutes to keep it. After that we must do something to regain the audience’s attention. He does this really well in this book, and I found it very interesting to read.
In the introduction of Brain Rules, John Medina introduces us to 12 rules of how the brain works. He briefly speaks about how our brains have evolved overtime and how we don’t know enough of how the brain works. I found it interesting how he says if we were to understand how we pick up a glass of water it would be a major achievement because something as little as picking up a glass of water uses so many different parts and functions of our brain that we can’ t even fathom the thought of understanding the works behind it. Also, it interests me how our brains grew overtime. For example, we went from scratching rocks together to create fires, to now creating rocket fuel. Our brains grow through generations. I look forward to further exploring the many ways of our brains.
John medina gives us a clean Glance of what the book is going to be mostly about in the introduction. Media explain how amazing the brain is. One example to this is how us humans started just throwing rocks at other rocks, next thing was we were making fire with the rocks, next thing is we were making pyramids and all that stuff. He also explains how we are different from other creatures such as animals, we can create stuff, we make art, we construct, we build, etc. and it’s things like that that makes us different. He also spoke on how powerful out brain is but how it still has flaws, our brain can only pay attention to one thing at the time. Overall I learned a lot of new stuff I don’t know about the brain, I’m looking froward to learning more about the brain in the following chapters.
John Medina’s Brain Rules Introduction
Summary
“Man’s mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not.” -Ayn Rand
In John Medina’s Brain Rule introduction, It will be divided into two parts, the first part will consist in how Medina describe on average and basically the content of the book such as explaining some rules in short terms, and he describe himself as scientist during his research as a neuroscientist. The second part is going to talk about in detail about the first rule called “The brain evolved, too” that as the name itself describes the evolution of the brain. To begin with, Medina tries to get the attention of the reader by given many amazing facts, for example, there are some people that are capable to multiply large numbers in second, memorize vast amounts of information, and analyze and object detail by detail, in order to show how the brain is capable of. Also, he explained some of the brain rules such as brain rule #2 which is how exercising can increase memory, reasoning, and attention. Brain rule #3 sleep which can be define as if someone can take some nap for short period of time, that person can increase his/her concentration. In addition, the brain rule about concentration which Medina points out that on average the concentration can last 10 minutes. Also, Medina mentioned himself as a “grumpy scientist” which means he is really strict when he is talking about evidences. He prefers to double check and replicated all his findings several times before publishing his material. Moreover, he tells us about his experienced as a neuroscientist and how he define the brain as “performance envelope” meaning that the brain has been designed to solve problems and function as a surviving tool. This lead us to the brain rule #1 “the brain evolves, too” which talk about some of the function that help the brain help us evolve as species. For instance, symbolic reasoning which is the ability to associate symbols and give them a meaning if we previously see the pattern of that symbol such as the pentagon (5 sides symbol) or imagine that a stick is a sword. Furthermore, this ability helped us evolved to what is called “derivation of dual representation” that can be described as “tool making process” that started thousands of years ago by shaping object such as rocks into weapons of hunting, basically is using the imagination to make objects. In the evolution process, the brain has been adapted during this entire process and can be seeing in activities such as walking in 2 legs (energy-efficient), making tools (as I mentioned before) in order to make us survive and improving the way we think today or making us more smarter. We can experience this advance thinking by the way that the brain evolves and go through the different layers on the brain. As Medina explains the brain evolves from the inside out, starting by the lizard brain that is in charge of breathing, sleeping, and walking. Then, the mammalian brain that is in charge of survival, fighting, feeding, and fleeing. Also, the amygdala (rage, anger, pleasure), hippocampus (short term memory and long term memory), and the cortex layer where the neurons are located and make their function of transmitting information and it is in charge for the speech, vision, and memory. Finally, he talked about cooperation which basically can be define that all we have a purpose and can be followed by the direction that we want to take altogether in group and about the collective consciousness that all we share. At the end, we can say that the brain is a fascinating machine that help us evolves and also develop as species and perhaps it is true what Ayn Rand said about the mind.
Brain Rules John Medina :Introduction
Summary
In Introduction John Medina introduces 12 different brain rules how a human brain works. John Medina describes brain as the sophisticated information-transfer system on Earth. As I kept on reading a thing really grabbed my attention John Medina writes “people don’t pay attention to boring things. You’ve got seconds to grab someone’s attention and only 10 minutes to keep it”. I agree with this because I really cannot pay attention to many things I try to multi task and as a result I keep missing thing. For example I am reading this book and I am listening to music and in addition I try to play game at the same time like listening music and reading book isn’t enough. Honestly there are only few books that I really paid attention and that made me keep reading it again and again Paulo Coelho’s the alchemist and François Lelord’s Hector and the Search for Happiness. Medina writes at 9 minutes 59 second you must do something to regain attention and the alchemist really had that something that kept me reading. In conclusion we can say that brain is a sophisticated information-transfer system on Earth which is capable of doing many things yet incapable of multitasking.
John Medina’s objective in the Brain Rule’s introduction is to explain us his 12 rules of how brain works and that we could apply those things in our daily lives; at work, school and home. Based on his studies he gives recommendations to his audience on how to improve the brain’s skills. Medina as psychiatric understand very well the human’s behavior and also he’s been part of many experiments so he’s the right person to tell and explain us that some things are not as we may think. Medina’s says that our brains develop while we’re working out and that’s why exercise boosts brain power and that is the Brain Rule #1. He explains that people don’t pay attention to boring things, you just have seconds to grab someone’s attention and only 10 minutes to keep it and that’s the fourth rule. Also, in brain rules #5 he wants to explain us how the brain deals the memory and that we need to keep repeating the things to remember them. I’m very interested on how the brain behave and the things I could be able to do to have a better knowledge of how my brain works so I could improve my cognitive skills. That’s why I’ve liked this book so far because is something that can help me to understand that some things are not as I believe.
Medina described how intelligent each one of our brains are even though we don’t release it. The first fact that he mentioned that was by how well we treat our bodies will have a long term affect on our brain. By exercising a person has a stronger memory, reasoning, attention and problem solving tasks compared to someone who is a couch potato. Getting a good amount of sleep is crucial for us because it will allow our brains to work more efficiently and clearly. It’s hard to believe that only a 26 minute nap improved a NASA pilots’ performance by 34%. By not having enough sleep and rest it will affect one’s mental activities in a negative way. What I did not find surprising was that humans have a 10 minute attention span which is why students have a hard time focusing in class unless a professor is able to do something to regain their attention. This introduction seems to be everything I thought this book would be about. Medina’s goes from one topic to another quickly which although may be confusing, it very well catches my attention whenever I start to lose focus.
Medina described how intelligent each one of our brains are even though we don’t realize it. The first fact that he mentioned that was by how well we treat our bodies will have a long term affect on our brain was interesting. By exercising a person has a stronger memory, reasoning, attention and problem solving tasks compared to someone who is a couch potato. Getting a good amount of sleep is crucial for us because it will allow our brains to work more efficiently and clearly. It’s hard to believe that only a 26 minute nap improved a NASA pilots’ performance by 34%. By not having enough sleep and rest it will affect one’s mental activities in a negative way. What I did not find surprising was that humans have a 10 minute attention span which is why students have a hard time focusing in class unless a professor is able to do something to regain their attention. This introduction seems to be everything I thought this book would be about. Medina’s goes from one topic to another quickly which although may be confusing, it very well catches my attention whenever I start to lose focus.
John Medina stands up that there are twelve rules that you need to follow to make your brain function to its maximum. You can find a lot of scientific explanations to some myths about brain and brain’s activity. Also in this introduction part Medina talks about his personal research and practical experience and how he had used his knowledge to help in researches. He also points that he was trying to make this book as reader-friendly as possible, so you can find extensive references separately from the main text.
This book, as promised will help to understand the basics and will help to discover maybe some of known facts about human brain, its activity.
John Medina’s Brain Rules Introduction
For a book that I just recently started reading, it caught my attention very quickly, it gave me a math problem and it told me to solve it in a few seconds which was impossible for me but possible for a “young man Who can double that number 24 times in the space of a few seconds” The book start off telling us that yet A person I Q can be very low it does not determine a persons Intelligence because there are many ways A person can be smart and many ways a person can show their intelligence just that not everybody shows it the same way. This chapter also tells us other ways to increase our brain intelligence sleep and exercise are two out of twelve rules that Caught my attention because I love to sleep and I do a lot of exercise.