The Chapter on Music is excellent, as is the rest of the book ( )

It gives alot of information about brain principal and their processing method.

Student ( )

Finished Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School by John Medina. Medina is a developmental molecular biologist and the directory of the Brain Center for Applied Learning research at Seattle Pacific. He wrote this book to communicate to the rest of us some of the results of recent research on the brain. In my opinion, Medina succeeded.

I like the structure of the book. Each chapter is built around a particular "brain rule", a rule of thumb for effectively using your brain. Most of the chapter discusses research and tells stories to convey what the rule means and the scientific basis for believing that rule. Each chapter contains a discussion of ways these rules could be applied at home, work, and school and suggests ways to objectively test the translation of these rules into real world recommendations. At the end of the chapter is a summary of that brain rule.

This structure makes the book easy to read, and makes it easy to navigate when you want to refresh your memory. The book also has a pretty spiffy website which discusses the 12 rules in more detail than my summary (although, obviously, not as much as the book).

The short version of the 12 brain rules (straight from the back of the book) are:

Exercise: Exercise boots brain power.
Survival: The human brain evolved too.
Wiring: Every brain in wired differently.
Attention: We don't pay attention to boring things.
Short-term memory: Repeat to remember.
Long-term memory: Remember to repeat.
Sleep: Sleep well, think well.
Stress: Stressed brains don't learn the same way.
Sensory integration: Stimulate more of the senses.
Vision: Vision trumps all other senses.
Gender: Male and female brains are different.
Exploration: We are powerful and natural explorers.

You'll have to read the book or the website to figure out what each of these means. =) ( )

I learned a lot of interesting facts about how the human brain collect and process different types of information. The author gave some suggestions on how to capitalize on these many natures of the brain to help us function better (e.g. Exercise 30 minutes for three times a week, take a nap in the afternoon, put boys and girls in separate classes to teach them math and reading, take music lessons....) ( )