John Medina's Brain Rules--A Review

After I said some nice things about an article summarizing Dr. Medina's brain research at the U of Washington and Seattle Pacific University, his publisher sent me a note saying that Dr. Medina's 12 rules had been expanded to a book, entitled Brain Rules, to be released in March 2008. Would I like to receive a copy? Sure, I said, send one along. Pear Press kindly sent me a copy of his book, 280 pages plus indices, which really is only the beginning of what Pear Press is doing for him. They have already cut a number of videos on YouTube, established a John Medina newsletter, established an RSS Feed, a Facebook community, a DVD, podcasts and a number of other things that seem calculated to maximize the impact of the book to the "new audiences" of our web-based culture. In short, the publisher seems to be doing all it can to help make Dr. Medina a sort of "rising-star" in popularizing brain research for the general public.

More specifically, however, Dr. Medina's interest seems to be in mediating the results of the last 30 or so years of brain research so that companies would have more effective workers and schools more prepared learners. Each page of the book, or at least each chapter, speaks the langugage of efficiency, productivity, and general increase of the bottom line for business. Though he has chapters on learning and retaining things, and though his insights on learning are helpful (e.g., the events happening at the initial learning of a concept are important in your later retrieving the information, p. 116), he has not thought much about how brain research or what we know about the brain would alter the way that material is presented, learned, tested, internalized. His "10 minutes and a break" is helpful, but when you realize that it also is true that "bored brains don't learn," he doesn't seem to realize the potential contradiction in what he has just said. The first point is to discover, encourage, find, etc. "unbored" brains, and he doesn't give us a clue on how to do that...

What the Brain Rules Are

Dr. Medina lays out what he considers to be 12 "rules" or "principles" of the brain gleaned from the work of molecular or evolutionary biologists, those who study brain tissues, experimental psychologists and cognitive neuroscientists. Some of the "rules" are helpful and strikingly insightful, such as the value of exercise while working. Indeed, the Harvard Business Review has labeled this idea one of its "Breakthrough Ideas for 2008". Some of his chapters, however, such as his observations on gender and the brain (ch. 11), seem to rely more on pop psychology than on any connection between brain chemistry and action (or, at least, I don't think he has made the connection clear to me between the differences between male and female brains and the work of Deborah Tannen). Some of his chapters are so speculative, such as the role of evolutionary biology in brain development, that I sat scratching my head throughout the whole chapter and saying, "How does he know it was 10,000,000 rather than 2,000,000 years ago?"

His major point is that brain research, fueled by an ever-increasing agglomeration of scholars, holds the promise for understanding so many things about how we learn, how we feel and how we live that researchers need lots more funding to continue their efforts. Indeed, we are just in the infancy of this research. Perhaps because we know so little, however, Dr. Medina pulls out all the stops to try to be utterly "cool" in his writing and examples. He isolates a "Jennifer Aniston" neuron in the brain; he tells stories about dogs and his kids, about Jack LaLanne and various pro athletes, about famous cases in brain research since the middle of the 19th century. When all the dust has settled, however, I am left with a nagging feeling that we really know very little about the brain and the way that the chemistry of a particular person's brain works, and that his homey stories and attempts at humor are meant to try to get us all so jazzed about the subject that we might not say, "Wait a second. Can you tell me how my brain works, specifically, and how I can make it 30 percent more efficient?"

More Specific Critiques

I had about four questions that were major for me as I was reading, that don't seem to be well handled in the book. First, about documentation. I am told under "references" (p. 281), that "extensive, notated references" are on the web site for the book. But I went to the website and found nothing of "extensive, notated references." I just found links to YouTube videos, or a summary of the book or invitations to join various podcasts, etc. But, you see, I am not just interested in the traditional academic paraphernalia--of footnotes and bibliograpy. I want some kind of explanation of how brain research has evolved in the past 40 or so years, and why people think it has so much promise.

Second, the format of the book belies Dr. Medina's major point. He suggests that we learn some huge percentage better (I don't recall the number and I don't know how he knows) if we learn visually than just with words. First, I don't really agree with him--I think that word-learning can help create the conditions so that we create our own pictures, that are much more vital than any pictures that can be created by an artist but if he is right, why is his whole book in text? He recognizes the problem on p. 234:

"Like an art junkie, we linger at each feature, rigorously and independently verifying it before moving to the next. The finding has broad implications for reading efficiency. Reading creates a bottleneck. My text chokes you..."

Ok, let us assume that he is correct--that his text chokes us. How has he, the devotee of visual learning, handled the issue? By giving us one, yes one, picture of the brain, on p. 41. Don't we have a problem here? If he is indeed correct about the connection of visual to learning, then every page of his book should be rich with diagrams about how various parts of the brain are stimulated through various activities. I need to see what he is talking about. Just because you link YouTube videos to your presentation means nothing--because it is just the good professor talking again. So, the entire premise of Rule 10 is undermined by the shape of the book.

Third, he tells us that in ancient times, Aristotle and others throught that the seat of human consciousness and learning was in the "heart" (p. 200). Well, when did we begin to think that the brain was the center of the action? And, for what reasons? And why do we think so now? A brief history on the evolution of how we have studied and understood the brain would be helpful. If one says that the aim of the book is for a "popular" audience, that is no excuse not to give a popular audience good information. All insights from human thinkers can be made accessible to an intelligent reading public if you just know what the scholar was trying to say well enough and can express yourself clearly.

Finally, I am put off at the length of this book. Each chapter, it seems, could have been condensed about 70% without losing anything of substance in it. I found myself living in rule # 4 a lot (boredom) because he had violated rule # 10 (on visual nature of learning), and I didn't quite know how to get out of it. Stories can sometimes help, but I really wanted some basic information about the brain.

Conclusion

I am not sure that this book really is written for someone like me--a learner. It seems to be focused more toward two types of people, corporate executives who want to have more efficient workers and people who might be able to give money to fund more brain research. Hm...when you think of it for a moment more, perhaps those are the same people. Is this all just about money and this book primarily written to help fund the new center at SPU? Well, good luck to him and SPU if it is. But I am still looking for some good images of the brain--and how brain research helps us understand what actually happens when a thought comes into my mind...

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