John Medina Quotes

The more handles one creates at the moment of learning, the more likely the information is to be assessed at a later date. The handles we can add revolve around content, timing, and environment.

Imaging studies have shown that exercise increases blood volume in a region of the brain called the dentate gyrus. That's a big deal. The dentate gyrus is a vital constituent of the hippocampus, a region deeply involved in memory formation.

What to say instead: "You really worked hard" What should Ethan's parents have done? Research reveals a simple solution. Rather than praising him for being smart, they should have praised him for working hard. On the successful completion of a test, they should not have said, "I'm so proud of you. You're such a bright kid." That appeals to a fixed, uncontrollable intellectual trait. It's called "fixed mindset" praise. His parents should have said, "I'm so proud of you. You must have studied a lot." This appeals to controllable effort. It's called "growth mindset" praise.

One of the greatest predictors of successful aging, they found, is the presence or absence of a sedentary lifestyle. Put

The messages that do grab your attention are connected to memory, interest, and awareness.

Ethan's parents constantly told him how brainy he was. "You're so smart! You can do anything, Ethan. We are so proud of you, they would say every time he sailed through a math test. Or a spelling test. Or any test. With the best of intentions, they consistently tethered Ethan's accomplishment to some innate characteristic of his intellectual prowess. Researchers call this "appealing to fixed mindsets." The parents had no idea that this form of praise was toxic.

　　Little Ethan quickly learned that any academic achievement that required no effort was the behavior that defined his gift. When he hit junior high school, he ran into subjects that did require effort. He could no longer sail through, and, for the first time, he started making mistakes. But he did not see these errors as opportunities for improvement. After all, he was smart because he could mysteriously grasp things quickly. And if he could no longer grasp things quickly, what did that imply? That he was no longer smart. Since he didn't know the ingredients making him successful, he didn't know what to do when he failed. You don't have to hit that brick wall very often before you get discouraged, then depressed. Quite simply, Ethan quit trying. His grades collapsed.


What happens when you say, 'You're so smart'

　　Research shows that Ethan's unfortunate story is typical of kids regularly praised for some fixed characteristic. If you praise your child this way, three things are sta

Emotions get our attention.

If you wanted to create an education environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you probably would design something like a classroom. If you wanted to create a business environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you probably would design something like a cubicle. And if you wanted to change things, you might have to tear down both and start over.

The mammalian brain's functions include what researchers call the "four F's": fighting, feeding, feeling and ... reproductive behavior.

Many couples will fight in front of their children but reconcile in private. This skews a child's perceptions, even at early ages, for the child always sees the wounding but never the bandaging. Parents who practice bandaging each other after a fight, deliberately and explicitly, allow their children to model both how to fight fair and how to make up.

The brain acts like a muscle: The more activity you do, the larger and more complex it can become. Whether that equates to more intelligence is another issue, but one fact is indisputable; What you do in life physically changes what your brain looks like. You can wire and rewire your brain with the simple choice of which musical instrument---or professional sport---you play

Here's something you can try at home if you are eight months pregnant or if you have a baby younger than 5 months old. If the infant has already arrived, place him on his back. Then gently lift up both of his legs, or both of his arms, and let them drop back to the bed of their own weight. His arms will usually fling out from the sides of his body, thumbs flexed, palms up, with a startled look on his face. This is called the Moro reflex.

Author Elizabeth Stone once said, Making a decision to have a child - it's momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.

For example, from nouns to verbs to aspects of grammar, we each store language in different areas, recruiting different regions for different components.

Many families actively discourage the expression of tough emotions like fear and anger. Happiness and tranquility, meanwhile, make it to the top of the list of "approved" emotions. There is no such thing as a bad emotion. There is no such thing as a good emotion. An emotion is either there - or it is not. These parents seem to know that emotions don't make people weak and they don't make people strong. They only make people human. The result is a savvy let-the-children-be-who-they-are attitude.
-They do not judge emotions.
-They acknowledge the reflexive nature of emotions.
-They know that behavior is a choice, even though an emotion is not.
-They see a crisis as a teachable moment.

People view their own behaviors as originating from amendable, situational constraints,but they view other people's behavior as originating from inherent, immutable personality traits.

Larks report being most alert around noon and feel most productive at work a few hours before they eat lunch. They don't need an alarm clock, because they invariably get up before the alarm rings - often before 6:00 a.m. Larks cheerfully report their favorite mealtime as breakfast and generally consume much less coffee than non-larks. Getting increasingly drowsy in the early evening, most larks go to bed (or want to go to bed) around 9:00 p.m.

How People Learn. If you want people to be able to pay attention, don't start with details. Start with the key ideas and, in a hierarchical fashion, form the details around these larger notions. Meaning before details.

Assigning work projects based on an employee's strengths may be critical to your group's productivity. You may discover you had a Michael Jordan on your team but couldn't see it because you were only asking him to play baseball.

After years of investigating aging populations, researchers' answer to the question of how much is not much. If all you do is walk several times a week, your brain will benefit. Even

Get into the habit of rewarding the intellectual exertion your child puts into a given task rather than his or her native intellectual resources.

The most common communication mistakes? Relating too much information, with not enough time devoted to connecting the dots.

What's obvious to you is obvious to you.

The brain cannot multitask. Multitasking, when it comes to paying attention, is a myth. The brain naturally focuses on concepts sequentially, one at a time ... To put it bluntly, research shows that we can't multitask. We are biologically incapable of processing information-rich inputs simultaneously ... Studies show that a person who is interrupted takes 50 percent longer to accomplish a task. Not only that, he or she makes up to 50 percent more errors.

If you are trying to get information across to someone, your ability to create a compelling introduction may be the most important single factor in the later success of your mission.

We are human because we can fantasize.

The brain appears to be designed to (1) solve problems (2) related to surviving (3) in an unstable outdoor environment, and (4) to do so in nearly constant motion. I call this the brain's performance envelope.

Over the long term, however, too much adrenaline produces scarring on the insides of your blood vessels. These scars become magnets for molecules to accumulate, creating lumps called plaques. These can grow large enough to block the blood vessels. If it happens in the blood vessels of your heart, you get a heart attack; in your brain, you get a stroke.

Money increases happiness only when it lifts people out of poverty to about $50,000 a year in income.

The problem in today's economy is that people are typically starting a family at the very time they are also supposed to be doing their best work. They are trying to be productive at some of the most stressful times of their lives. What if companies took this unhappy collision of life events seriously? They could offer Gottman's intervention as a benefit for every newly married, or newly pregnant, employee.

John Bransford, a gifted education researcher, has spent many years studying what separates novice teachers from expert teachers. One of many things he noticed is the way the experts organize information. "[Experts'] knowledge is not simply a list of facts and formulas that are relevant to their domain; instead, their knowledge is organized around core concepts or 'big ideas' that guide their thinking about their domains," he cowrote in How People Learn.

if you get a certain breed of dog or buy a certain model of car, you suddenly start noticing the same dog or car everywhere you go.

What you do and learn in life physically changes what your brain looks like - it literally rewires it.

The brain cannot multitask...The brain naturally focuses on concepts sequentially, one at a time...This attentional ability is, to put it bluntly, not capable of multitasking.

Create a Chocolate Factory There may be as many different types of playrooms as there are families, but every one of them should have the following design element: lots of choices. A place for drawing. A place for painting. Musical instruments. A wardrobe hanging with costumes. Blocks. Picture books. Tubes and gears. Anything where a child can be safely let loose, joyously free to explore whatever catches her fancy. Did you see the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory? If so, you may have been filled with wonder at the chocolate plant, complete with trees, lawns, and waterfalls - a totally explorable, nonlinear ecology. That's what I mean. I am focusing on artistic pursuits because kids who are trained in the arts

Having a first child is like swallowing an intoxicating drink made of equal parts joy and terror, chased with a bucketful of transitions nobody ever tells you about.

The more attention the brain pays to a given stimulus, the more elaborately the information will be encoded - and retained.

One of the greatest predictors of performance in school turns out to be the emotional stability of the home.

We must do a better job of encouraging lifelong curiosity.

The brain processes meaning before detail. Providing the gist, the core concept, first was like giving a thirsty person a tall glass of water. And the brain likes hierarchy. Starting with general concepts naturally leads to explaining information in a hierarchical fashion. You have to do the general idea first. And then you will see that 40 percent improvement in understanding.

You've got seconds to grab your audience's attention and only minutes to keep it.

People usually forget 90 percent of what they learn in a class within 30 days. He further showed that the majority of this forgetting occurs within the first few hours after class.

As always, there are exceptions. Adults with training can still learn to distinguish speech sounds in other languages. But in general, the brain appears to have a limited window of opportunity in an astonishingly early time frame. The cognitive door begins swinging shut at 6 months old, and then, unless something pushes against it, the door closes. By 12 months, your baby's brain has made decisions that affect her the rest of her life.

Kids praised for effort complete 50 percent more hard math problems than kids praised for intelligence.

You may think that grown-ups create children. The reality is that children create grown-ups. They become their own person, and so do you. Children give so much more than they take.

Music has been a part of the cultural expression of virtually every culture ever studied. It may even extend into prehistoric times. A 35,000-year-old flute made from bird bone has been discovered,

The brain cannot multitask

WE DO NOT SEE with our eyes. We see with our brains.

This rarely happens in a visit to the pediatrician's office, but it should. The good doctor would ask you about the health of your baby and give your little bundle of joy a routine examination. Then she'd look you in the eyes and ask some truly intrusive questions about your social life. "Do you have many friends?" the pediatrician would inquire. "What social groups do you and your husband belong to? How important are these groups to you? How diverse are they? How much contact time do you and your husband have with them?" The doctor doesn't ask about these things because your social life is none of her business. The problem is, it is plenty of the infant's business.

Because we don't fully understand how our brains work, we do dumb things. We try to talk on our cell phones and drive at the same time, even though it is literally impossible for our brains to multitask when it comes to paying attention.