Today, we are concluding our reading of John Medina’s Brain Rules by taking a look at the “Exploration” chapter that you read before today’s class. Besides simply summarizing today’s reading, I would like you to discuss why this chapter is so important to the work that you are doing on Project Two now, and the work that you will be doing in all of your classes at City Tech as you work your way towards a career. We will discuss this during the first part of class.
15 thoughts on “Beginning of Class Writing: John Medina’s Brain Rules, “Exploration””
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
According to Medina,” some part of our adult brains stay as malleable as a baby’s so that we can create neurons and learn new things throughout our lives”. This caught my attention because it shows that people never stops learning. Doesn’t matter how experienced a person is there’s always more to learn. Unlike a flash drive, or computer our brain doesn’t have any capacity to how much we can put inside it. The more different kinds of things we learn the more understanding we get. Curiosity makes us explorers, we check new things because we are curious about it. This chapter is important to the work we are doing on project 2. Even though we thought we knew about our majors but by doing more research we found new useful information. Someone once said “knowledge is infinite”. The more time we invest in something the more we can learn about that certain thing.
While reading the Exploration chapter in John Medina’s Brain Rules, this chapter opened my eyes to how people explore life in different ways. This is compared to my research I am doing, for Project 2 in English 1101. The essay is about our major’s and what we want to do as a career later in life. Also why we choose the career, background about it and how the career/major connects back to us. We constantly like to explore by experiencing things, like the little boy Josh at the beginning of the chapter, who knows how “Dangerous” the bumble bee was, he was told by his father who constantly yelled out “DANGER”. The boy was so curious that he touched the bee and was stung. “Curiosity killed the cat” after going through this emotional experienced, the little boy now knows how it feels to touch a bumble bee and probably won’t do it again. Humans are natural explorers, we begin to be life long learners at a young age and you can see it best in the younger years. It’s in us to think about everything, even if it doesn’t seem important at the time. Babies are born with a desire to understand whats going on around them and they aggressively explore. They are like scientist, making observations from a hypothesis, design an experiment and make a conclusion from it. A baby mirrored Andy Meltzoff, as he sticked his tongue out, so did the baby. John Medina did the same to his child and they created a relationship by doing so and whenever he walked into the room, the baby sticked their tongue out. This is called “Mirror Neurons”. The right prefrontal cortex looks for errors in our hypothesis and an adjoining region tells us to change behavior. Lastly some parts of our brain stays as malleable as a baby, so that we can create neurons to learn new things througoht our lives.
In John Medinaâs âExplorationâ chapter he speaks about the idea of people being powerful and natural explorers. Medina states how âbabies are the model of how we learn.â They learn by active testing through observation. Pretty much meaning that they learn by looking around and checking if things work through trial and error. Certain parts of the brain help with this process all at once. According to Medina, the right prefrontal cortex looks for errors in our hypothesis, and an adjoining region tells us to change behavior. Mirror neurons in our brains allows us to recognize and imitate behavior. Some parts of our brains can be changed as easily as a babyâs. This allows us to create neurons and learn new things throughout our lives.
Exploration starts off with Medina using his son as an example of what happens when children learn what to do after they experience events in their lives. What I mean is that his son knew that if he saw a bee, it would mean âdangerâ but once Medina looked away, his song Josh reached for the bee and got stung. He talks about how babies tend to mimic what others do and use that to communicate. Medina believes children are born with the idea of wanting to learn and how we are not born with a blank slate. We mimic because we have a âmirror neuronâ which are cells that indicate what their surroundings are. This chapter is important for project two because we are still exploring around our majors and what we want to become. We might reflect what we are taught to help others the way we were raised. Exploration could also be important because the brain is wired to retain information as we age. This could cause us to change our mind on our career path or even become more interested of the field study we are in.
The exploration chapter explains the human curiosity. How we want to learn about many new things and even more about what we already know. The current project we are working on is asking us to explain in depth and write an understanding point of view of what we are currently learning and what we will be doing with our education. What I had figured out from this was that when we chase our dreams we are exploring. Just as much as going for an exciting hike in the woods. We are learning more and more, taking a journey down the road of books, equations, writing, drawing, picture taking and many more. This is how we explore, with the ability to learn many different new things, to challenge problems that interest us and overcome them from learning. That happens all because of curiosity.
So I have just read the last chapter from John Medinaâs â Brain Rules â it’s called, âexplorationâ .Hereâs the chapter summary: Exploration starts with Medina talking about his 2 year old son . For his son everything is new. He wants to experience everything without knowing the danger. Using his son as an example he explains how children learn . Medina believes children are born with the idea of wanting to learn .The desire to explore never leaves us , even if you are not in the class room. They are the model of how we learn . They learn by active testing through observation, hypothesis, experiment, and conclusion. Babies methodically do experiments on different things just to see what they will do. Also we mimic different things because we have a âmirror neuronâ which are cells that indicate what their surroundings are. Also some part of our adult brains stay parallel as a babyâs so that we can create neurons and learn new things throughout our lives. This chapter is important for project two because we are like babies. We just started our college life , it’s still new to us .Like babies we are exploring this new college life and looking at different majors.
The Exploration chapter by John Medina told about how exploring connects to analyzing, imitation and vision can help our survival due to our brainâs development. To survive, we need to pick up skills of survival and not rely on âwhat to do nextâ to just fall out of the sky, just instincts. A serious of experiments was performed by scientist on babies to test the theory that, from a young age babies can adapt by just repeating a step over and over. Most of these experiments are performed on babies because, âBabies reveal more of the brainâs secrets each yearâ. This chapter revolved around the idea that, we need to outgrow what we know to expand our minds even more. This book was or will be important to my current work at city tech and my career because, it provided me on insights of different elements I already possess but didnât seem to use much. This will help my project 2 essay because just reading the information by John Medina made me want to change up certain parts of my current work and self.
Today I read the exploration chapter by John Medina and he says that we are born natural explorers and it never leaves us. He started with an personal experience as always by using his two years old son as an example when he was stung by a bee. Even though he knew the bee was “danger” it did not stop him from reaching to the bee. This chapter relates to the project i am currently doing in class because we have to find out more about our major beside what we already know.
In chapter âExplorationâ John Medina explains that people never stop learning things and they experience things in different ways. When a baby born it creates create new neurons in brain that help him or her to learn. The baby observes the surrounding learn things that are important to survive. Your brain usually explores those things, which catch your attention. We want to explore things that are interesting for us or things on which we give our attention. This connects to our project two because we researcher for out major/career because we are interested in it and had to get good grade in project two. So we explored about our major/career and get information to use in our essay. When a teacher gives a lecture you just focus on what the teacher is saying and try to analyze it because you want to learn and get good grade in class so you have to learn the things that you need for that course.
In chapter âExplorationâ John Medina explains that people never stop learning things and they experience things in different ways. When a baby born it creates create new neurons in brain that help him or her to learn. The baby observes the surrounding learn things that are important to survive. Your brain usually explores those things, which catch your attention. We want to explore things that are interesting for us or things on which we give our attention. This connects to our project two because we researcher for out major/career because we are interested in it and had to get good grade in project two. So we explored about our major/career and get information to use in our essay. When a teacher gives a lecture you just focus on what the teacher is saying and try to analyze it because you want to learn and get good grade in class so you have to learn the things that you need for that course.
According to the exploration chapter in the book Brain Rules â We are powerful and natural explorersâ itâs amazing how there is a lot that a human brain knows how to do right off the bat. Humans are born with a ton of â preloaded softwareâ.The human will never learn how to stop learning. It will always be learning new things each and every day.One story that catches my attention was the “18 months old: objects still exist if you can’t see them.” It’s like playing hide and go seek, and the bonding experience of peek a boo . The 18 month old baby called Emily ,still believes that if an object or human is hidden from other points of view. To change Emily this happened.Emily covers a cup with a cloth and then pauses for a bit. She takes the cloth off quickly and she is surprised that the cup is still under the cloth that she pulled off. Emily has realized if something is removed from view it doesn’t mean the object has disappeared. This wya the cutest thing ever that I have read in the book brain rules. This little experiment done explains that little Emily was excited and surprised to explore something new at such a young age.
Once again, we are here today to discuss the final chapter of John Medinaâs famous title âBrain Rulesâ. In this chapter we discuss the chapter regarding âExplorationâ. Medina makes a few important statements that we should take note of. Medina states that babies are the models of how we all learn which was learned through observation, hypothesis, experiments and conclusion. He states that we can remember the behavior because our brains have a system called “mirror neurons” that scatter across the brain. He also states that specific parts of the brain allows for a more scientific approach and found that the right cortex of our brains looks for errors in our hypothesis.
In the final chapter of John Medina’s Brain Rules, titled “Exploration”, he discusses the idea that we as humans are “powerful and natural explorers”. Our brains have now and always best gathered information through the process of hypothesizing and experimenting. In the example of a baby, you frequently see them putting foreign objects in their mouths to test if they are edible, or throwing things to see if they will bounce, or even jumping around to test the strength in their legs. This is the natural way humans have adapted to learn things, and is handled by different sectors of the brain working together. A hypothesis is formed in the left, tested, and then evaluated and adapted to by the right side. This is especially relevant to me as an Engineering student here at City Tech, because I know with certainty that before my tenure is over I will try many hypotheses, many of which will fail and require me to try again.
Exploration is one of the most exciting things in this world. Traveling to a new environment, meeting new people, and stepping away from home to see what lies beyond can greatly expand our minds as a whole. In this final chapter of John Medinaâs âBrain Rulesâ, he talks about the logic behind exploring and how it has impacted mankind towards this very day. According to John Medina, âBabies are the model for how we learn – not by passive reaction to the environment but by active testing through observation, hypothesis, experiment and conclusionâ (Medina, 260). In other words, even as we grow, we are still curious to as what our new environment may hold and if weâll safe within it. This chapter in particular really spoke to me because it reminded me of a research class I took called WISE, a program in which students do full scale research projects based on their desired career major they want to pursue.
We all have that inner explorer. The urge to discover and learn new things. This is not something you learn, its something you’re born with. Babies gives researchers a clear view, unobstructed by years of contaminating experiences, of how humans naturally acquire information. Babies are born with a deep desire to understand the world around them and an incessant curiosity that compels them to aggressively explore it. This need for explorations is so powerfully stitched into their experience that some scientists describe it as a drive, just as hunger and thirst and sex are drives stated by John Medina. Research shows that the brain is wired to keep learning as we age. Some regions of the adult brain stay as malleable as a baby’s brain, so we can grow new connections, strengths existing connections, and even create new neurons, allowing all of us to be lifelong learner. As you can see by many years of research that we are born with the drive to explore new things or even new territory like many years ago. Our drive and ambition to gain more and learn more is what grows us as humans. The more we explore, the more we intake and therefore the more we learn and gain knowledge. Explorer is who we are as humans.