John Medina's Brain Rules #8: Stress -Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6Xq7CMOH1k

... And here's some information on Learned Helplessness cribbed from the You Are Not So Smart website:

The Misconception: If you are in a bad situation, you will do whatever you can do to escape it.

The Truth: If you feel like you aren’t in control of your destiny, you will give up and accept whatever situation you are in.

In 1965, a scientist named Martin Seligman started shocking dogs.

He was trying to expand on the research of Pavlov – the guy who could make dogs salivate when they heard a bell ring. Seligman wanted to head in the other direction, and when he rang his bell instead of providing food he zapped them with electricity. To keep them still, he restrained them in a harness during the experiment.

After they were conditioned, he put these dogs in a big box with a little fence dividing it into two halves. They figured if they rang the bell, the dog would hop over the fence to escape, but it didn’t. It just sat there and braced itself. They decided to try shocking them after the bell. The dog still just sat there and took it. When they put a dog in the box which had never been shocked before and tried to zap it – it jumped the fence.


You are just like these dogs.
If, over the course of your life, you have experienced crushing defeat or pummeling abuse or loss of control, you learn over time there is no escape, and if escape is offered, you will not act – you become a nihilist who trusts futility above optimism.

Studies of the clinically depressed show that when they fail they often just give in to defeat and stop trying. The average person will look for external forces to blame when they fail the mid-term. They will say the professor is an asshole, or they didn’t get enough sleep. Depressed people will blame themselves and assume they are stupid.

Do you vote? If not, is it because you think it doesn’t matter because things never change, or politicians are evil on both sides, or one vote in several million doesn’t count? Yeah, that’s learned helplessness.

When battered women, or hostages, or abused children, or long-time prisoners refuse to escape, they do so because they have accepted the futility of the attempt. What does it matter? If those people do get out of their situation, they often have a hard time committing to anything which may lead to failure.

Any extended period of negative emotions can lead to you giving in to despair and accepting your fate. If you remain alone for a long time, you will decide loneliness is a fact of life and pass up opportunities to hang out with people. The loss of control in any situation will lead to this state. A study in 1976 by Langer and Rodin showed in nursing homes where conformity and passivity is encouraged and every whim is attended to, the health and well-being of the patients declines rapidly. If, instead, the people in these homes are given responsibilities and choices, they remain healthy and active. This research was repeated in prisons. Sure enough, just letting prisoners move furniture and control the television kept them from developing health problems and staging revolts. In homeless shelters where people can’t pick out their own beds or choose what to eat, the residents are less likely to try and get a job or find an apartment.

When you are able to succeed at easy tasks, hard tasks feel possible to accomplish. When you are unable to succeed at small tasks, everything seems harder.

Rats given the opportunity to escape electric shocks are half as likely to develop tumors than those who are forced to bear them. Rats already suffering from cancer will die faster if placed into the inescapable shock experiment.

Every day – your job, the government, your addiction, your depression, your money – you feel like you can’t control the forces affecting your fate. So, you stage microrevolts. You customize your ringtone, you paint your room, you collect stamps. You choose.

Choices, even small ones, can hold back the crushing weight of helplessness, but you can’t stop there. You must fight back your behavior and learn to fail with pride. Failing often is the only way to ever get the things you want out of life. Besides death, your destiny is not inescapable.

You are not so smart, but you are smarter than dogs and rats. Don’t give in yet.

The book that started the study of learned helplessness. I have a copy, but it's a bit of a technical read. You can learn about the concept in other books.

Memory is Like a Blendler Left Running with the Lid Off

Memory is like a “blender left running with the lid off.”

From Brain Rules, 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School by John Medina

Most people believe that the brain is a lot like a recording device—that learning is something akin to pushing the “record” button (and remembering is simply pushing “playback”). Wrong. In the real world of the brain. . .nothing could be further from the truth. The moment of learning, of encoding, is so mysterious and complex that we have no metaphor to describe what happens to our brains in those first fleeting seconds.

The little we do know suggests it is like a blender left running with the lid off. The information is literally sliced into discrete pieces as it enters the brain and is splattered all over the insides of our mind. Stated formally, signals from different sensory sources are registered in separate brain areas. The information is fragmented and redistributed the instant the information is encountered. If you look at a complex picture, for example, your brain immediately extracts the diagonal lines from the vertical lines and stores them in separate areas. Same with color. If the picture is moving, the fact of its motion will be extracted and stored in a place separate than if the picture were static.


Here's a link to a long, in-depth look at learning and short-term memory

http://stuff4educators.com/index.php?p=1_14_Short-term-Memory

Brain Rules - The Mind Map Review

This blog combines two of my previoud blogs -- it features a Litemind Review book review of Brain Rules and Clark Quinn's Mind Map of the principles..

Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School
Brain Rules is a fascinating book that explores twelve simple principles to help us make the best use of our brains, enabling us to become better teachers, students, parents and business leaders.

Find below a short review of the book, along with a mind map summary created by blogger Clark Quinn.

The 12 Brain RulesThe 12 principles describing how our brain works best, which form the core of Dr. John Medina’s book Brain Rules, are:

1. Exercise. Exercise boosts brain power.
2. Survival. The human brain evolved, too.
3. Wiring. Every brain is wired differently.
4. Attention. We don’t pay attention to boring things.
5. Short-term memory. Repeat to remember.
6. Long-term memory. Remember to repeat.
7. Sleep. Sleep well, think well.
8. Stress. Stressed brains don’t learn the same way.
9. Sensory integration. Stimulate more of the senses.
10. Vision. Vision trumps all other senses.
11. Gender. Male and female brains are different.
12. Exploration. We are powerful and natural explorers.
Although many of us may already intuitively know at least some of these principles, Dr. Medina explains the science behind each of them in a clear, accessible and often very funny manner, bringing along many entertaining stories and practical ideas we can use in classrooms, corporations or in any work environment. The principles are also explained in several, often hilariously funny short videos, to help reinforce each chapter’s concepts (the book ships with a companion DVD).

The main idea of the book — which also serves as a big call for action — is that most of what’s in our world ignores these rules. As Dr. Medina points out, if you wanted to create an educational environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you would probably design something like a classroom. And the examples go on and on, from business presentations to office cubicles.

The good news is that we have an incredible amount of room for improvement in practically everything we design, if only we would consider the brain rules when designing the world around us.

No Mumbo-Jumbo
Throughout the years, I gradually lost interest in reading ‘brain facts’ articles. Things like “Humans use only 10% or less of their brain“, or the idea that “listening to Mozart makes you smarter” being passed as scientific truths started to really annoy me.

And that’s what I really like about Brain Rules: it’s based on real science. It’s backed up by peer-reviewed studies, often replicated many times. So when I say science, I mean it. And, surprisingly to many people, that doesn’t mean the book is boring, not by any means. In Dr. Medina own words, “I’m a nice guy, but a grumpy scientist.” Refreshing!

The Mind Map
And here’s Clark Quinn’s mind map of the principles.

For a larger view of this Mind Map, click the link below.

More Resources:

http://blog.learnlets.com/?p=540

Brain Rules by Dr. John Medina

Brain Rules was another one of my clearance section book scores. It seems worthwhile and it's a snap to read. I found the summary below of some of the rules online. As I blog on, I've discovered that you can learn an awful lot quickly and at nominal cost by reading Amazon reviews, finding interviews on the net, and watching videos on YouTube, TED, and elsewhere.

Brain Rules Summary

Your brain is the most powerful piece of machinery you own, but it’s likely that it’s the least cared for.  When was the last time you took it in for an oil change? In fact, I’m betting that you don’t even know how it works.  Well, join the club. Luckily, we’ve got John Medina, a developmental molecular biologist focussed on the genes involved in human brain development and the genetics of…wait a minute…who writes this stuff?  He’s a doctor and he knows more about the brain than almost anybody on the planet. 

Rule #1 – Exercise

Just in case you aren’t motivated to be on top of your game so you can rule the world, how about taking care of your brain so you don’t too soon?  As it turns out, exercise isn’t only good for your heart, it’s good for your brain too.  Studies have shown that your lifetime risk for both demential and Alzheimer’s are cut in half if you exercise on a regular basis, even in modest amounts.  So that’s the first thing you need to know about your brain – it wants you to exercise so that you don’t die.

Back in the day, when we were roaming around the Serengetti and grunting while we were hunting for food, we used to walk an average of 12 miles a day.  Which means, our bodies evolved on a heavy diet of exercise.  We simply weren’t built to sit in front of a computer at a desk for 8 hours at a time.  So what will all this exercise do?  It increases the flow of oxygen in our system, which then cleans up toxic chemicals left behind by food metabolism.  It also stimulates the protein that keeps the neurons connecting.  All to say that if your brain stays healthy, you stay healthy.

Rule #4 – Attention.

People don’t pay attention to boring things.  A shocking discovery, I know.  Next you’ll be telling me that people have short attention spans too, won’t you, Captain Obvious?  Yes, that is true as well.  What’s important here, however, is that the more attention the brain pays to something, the more elaborately the information gets encoded and stored in your memory.  Additionally, emotionally arousing events tend to be remembered better than neutral events.  This has big implications for those who want to get a message across.

Think back to the last time you were in the classroom.  Except this time, the teacher didn’t take their lessons from Ben Stein (Beuller, Beuller), they took them from Dr. Medina.  Here’s what you’d experience differently:

They’d start off with something that causes an emotional reaction related to the topic – for me, the scene at the end of Rudy where he gets the call to join the team and sacks the quarterback – that would work.

They would the start off with a general overview so you could connect the dots along with way.  For evolutionary reasons, you and I don’t tend to fill our brains with detailed minutiae, but generalized pictures of concepts or events.  It’s tough to keep somebody’s attention if they don’t know how it relates to the big picture.

In each 10 minute section, they would concentrate on a single key point.  Why?  Because we tend to tune out after 10 minutes.  That’s when it’s time to check back in and make things interesting again.

They wouldn’t let you play on your cell phone or talk to your friends during the presentation.  Why?  Because you simply can’t do more than one thing at a time, no matter how much you believe you can.  In fact, people who are interrupted take 50% longer to complete tasks and make 50% more mistakes while doing it.  So, your teacher wasn’t being an egomaniac by forcing you to listen, they were trying to help you learn.  Ok, maybe they were trying to be an egomaniac.  Whatever.

Rule #5 – Repeat to Remember

Rule #5 – Repeat to Remember.  Rule #5 – Repeat to Remember.  Rule #5 – Repeat to Remember.   Rule #5 – Repeat to Remember.  Get it?  Ah, I’m funny sometimes.  This is an important one. Here are three interesting facts about improving your short-term memory.

First, the human brain can only hold about 7 pieces of information for less than 30 seconds.  Essentially, our memories are a little bit stronger than a goldfish.  But not much.  That first 30 seconds also determines whether or not you’ll remember what you just learned.  So, if you want to remember the name of that tall drink of water you just met at the party, you need to keep saying his name.  That’s why networking experts will tell you to always use somebody’s name at least 3 times during your initial discussion with them.  “Mark, where did you get that lovely howling Wolf shirt, it’s simply delightful”. 

Secondly, and puzzlingly, the more elaborate the information you choose to “encode”, the easier it is to remember.  For instance, “Mark was wearing a ridiculous howling wolf t-shirt and told me that he still lives at home even though he’s 42 years old.” is better than “Mark, that guy from accounting”.  It’s the same idea when you create a sentence to help you remember an acronym, like “Never Eat Shredded Wheat,” which aside from being stunningly good advice, has helped millions of people around the world remember the four directions of the compass.  It’s more information, but for some reason it’s easier to remember.  One of the best ways to elaborately encode something new you’ve learned?  Do something with the knowledge – take an action.  It will force you to add something memorable to the learning.

Third, you remember the best when you in the same “environment” as you were when you learned the information.  So technically, if you are watching this video so that you’ll perform better at work, you’ll want to be watching this at work.  Weird, but true.  So, once again, do something with the knowledge at work, and do it now.  Not next week, because that would be too late.

Rule #6 – Remember to Repeat.

Quick – what kind of shirt was Bob wearing?  That’s right, that was a trick question, because his name was Mark.  Well done, grasshopper.  So you’ve remembered that for a good minute or so.  But guess what?  It takes years to cement a short-term memory into a long-term memory.  And the key to doing it is repetition over time with specific timed intervals.

Let’s think back to our school years again.  If you were anything like me, you probably crammed for your final exams.  This seemed to work quite well, because I got pretty good grades, especially in my math classes, which was my major (boring).  So, I’d take the test, get an A, and feel pretty damn proud of myself for how smart I was.  Fast forward a few years and I can’t even add up the my golf score without making a mistake.  I guess the joke was on me.  You see, I did absolutely nothing to encode it into my memory, and now it’s gone.  Just like all those years of French.  Gone, toute suite.

How would you incorporate this concept into your learning?  Allow for periods of reflection after you initially learn the material.  For instance, if you and I had studied consistently over the semester, we would have allowed the information to stew around in our brain and start to form a semblance of a memory.  We probably should have also been a part of a study group that discussed the material because conversations with others will force us to connect more dots than we otherwise might have.

What would be a really stupid thing to do if you wanted somebody to learn for the long term?  Give them an assessment immediately after they’ve learned the material – it means absolutely nothing.

Rule #7:  Sleep well, think well.

I would rename this rule – get to bed, now!  Fascinating fact: when we are sleeping, our brain is not resting at all.  In fact, it uses more energy while you are sleeping than it does while you are awake!  However, for about a million and one reasons, you need to get your sleep.  Think about it – from an evolutionary perspective, sleep puts us in an incredibly vulnerable position – just ask the poor people who find themselves face-to-face with a grizzly bear at the entrance to their tent.  Thus, we must be doing something pretty important while we are sleeping.

So what happens when we don’t get our sleep?  It decreases our ability to pay attention, our working memory, lowers our quantitative skills and logical reasoning, puts us in a terrible mood and even effects our motor skills.  In fact, studies have shown that going 21 hours without sleep is the same as being legally drunk.  Legally drunk is good for having fun, if that’s your thing, but not so good for learning.

How much sleep do you need?  There are no hard and fast rules, but if you wake up feeling like you need more sleep, you probably do.  You also could probably use a good cat nap around 3:00 in the afternoon, right at the 12-hour mark from the mid-point of your sleep.  If your boss wonders who you’ve put your ear plugs in and have your head planted firmly on your desk, you can regale her with this study: a 26-minute nap was shown to improve NASA pilots’ performance by 34 percent.  Sure, your job description probably doesn’t include flying a space shuttle, but it does include using your brain.

Rule #8 – Stressed brains don’t learn the same as non-stressed brains

Apparently, our brain is built to deal with stress that lasts about 30 seconds.  Like the stress you feel when faced with a saber-toothed tiger, or coming home after work and realizing that you left the toilet seat up in the morning.  The stress response in our body was designed in order to get our muscles moving and get us out of harm’s way.  In these types of situations, the brain will actually perform better.

However, our brain isn’t designed to deal with long-term stress where we feel like we have no control over the situation – like dealing with a co-worker who constantly belittles you.  In these situations, your brain can actually shrink.  Stress on the brain is kind of like George Costanza being “in the pool”.  It also damages your memory, weakens your immune system so you get sick more often, disrupts your ability to sleep and makes you more susceptible to depression.  This kind of stress sucks, big time.

Also, keep in mind that the same brain you use at home is the same brain you use at work.  So if your home life stinks, you’re going to perform poorly at work.  Conversely, if your work life stinks, you’re home life will suffer the consequences.

The advice?  Find ways to get rid of the bad stress.  Eliminate it from your life.  It’s not good for you.

Rules #9 – stimulate more of the senses at the same time.

Yes, stimulation is a good thing.  This is how your brain works.  We absorb information through our different senses – so when we are meeting Mark for the first time we are seeing his wolf-shirt, hearing the sounds of the music that’s playing smelling the…I think you get the picture.  The brain then takes those signals, disperses them to different parts of the brain, then reconstructs the event, eventually perceiving it as a whole.  Fascinating stuff.

Remember what we talked about earlier?  Of course you do – the more information we encode with the memory, the more we remember the experience.  And because our senses are being encoded as separate inputs, this counts as more information.

How much does this impact our ability to retain the memory?  This is one of those situations where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.  There is an enormous link between this finding and learning:  you’ll have more recall, with better resolution, that lasts longer.  The link is evident even 20 years later.

Rule #10: Vision trumps all other senses.

Guess what?  You are incredible at remembering pictures.  So am I.  And so are the other 6 billion or so people who share this fine planet with us.  Don’t believe me?  Here are the cold hard facts.  If you hear a piece of information, for instance my description of Mark earlier, three days later you’d remember 10% of it.  But because we added a picture to the mix, you’re going to remember 65% of that description.

So if pictures truly are worth a thousand words, what kind of things to we pay attention to in those pictures?  We pay attention to color.  We pay attention to orientation.  We pay lots of attention to size.  And we pay very special attention to an object in motion.

So the next time you pick up a book, or a pdf, or anything in the written form without supporting visuals that help explain what’s in the words on the page, you’ve been cheated of a true learning opportunity. 

That wraps up this summary.  Remember, if you want to learn these principles and keep them in your long-term memory, be sure to read this again, then put it into action, and come back to the summary a few more times in the next few weeks.  If you want to catch the Rules that we didn’t have time to get to, we’ll, you’re just going to have to buy the book.

A Mind Map book review of Brain Rules.