Episode 046: Dr. John Medina - Brain Rules
We’ve been waiting for years now for the chance to interview Dr. John Medina: Developmental Molecular Biologist, Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Washington School of Medicine, and author of Brain Rules, Brain Rules for Baby, Brain Rules for Aging Well, and Attack of the Teenage Brain, to name a few. Dr. Medina takes time out of his busy schedule to chat with us about Theory of Mind, stress and learning, and some history behind our fancy brains.

Connect with Dr. John Medina
Website: http://www.brainrules.net/ | Twitter: @BrainRulesBooks | Books: Brain Rules, Brain Rules for Baby, Brain Rules for Aging Well, Attack of the Teenage Brain

Connect with Vrain Waves
Website: vrainwaves.com | Twitter: @VrainWaves | Becky Twitter: @BeckyEPeters | Ben Twitter: @mrkalb

Links & Show Notes

• Intro to Brain Rules Chapter Summaries (01:12)
  • Rule #1: Exercise Boosts Brain Power
  • Doris Kearns Goodwin episode
  • Rule #3: Every Brain is Wired Differently
  • Free Solo Documentary
  • Daniel Kahnemann, Thinking Fast and Slow
• Dr. Medina’s journey through career (05:53)
• Drawing / Arts and the Brain (08:45)
  • Decentering behaviors are brain vitamins - can change the aging brain
• Theory of Mind & Empathy (11:01)
  • Cognitive & affective empathy
  • Improving Theory of Mind - Read lots of literary fiction, journal about your feelings while you read
• Teachers must be able to form accurate perceptions of students’ abilities (14:45)
  • When are you bewildering a student?
  • Book studies with faculty
• Educational Ecology (16:35)
  • “Learning is primarily a relational enterprise.”
• De-stressing the teacher / Theory of Mind takes an enormous amount of cognitive resource
• Empathic distress (17:56)
  • Jon Kabat-Zinn
  • The Mindful Way Workbook
• Stress Study with Dogs (20:00)
  • Chapter in Brain Rules: Stressed Brains Don’t Learn the Same Way
  • Martin Seligman / Stress study with dogs / Learned Helplessness
  • Inability to control the aversive stimuli = stress
• Depression (23:41)
  • NPY Peptide - resilience to aversive stimuli
• Executive Function (25:58)
  • Nature v. Nurture - boat analogy
  • Aerobic Exercise is a powerful way to improve executive function
  • Add a cognitive component = even bigger boost
  • Gym in the center of the school
  • Our brains evolved while we were walking 12 hours a day
• Are cell phones hurting teenage brains? (29:46)
  • Longer you spend looking at screens, worse you are at interpreting social cues from other people’s faces and expressions, nonverbal skills
  • Recovered after 5 days
• Multitasking and erosion of the attentional spotlight (33:04)
  • Inability to multitask when there are a lot of things to attend to creates stress / anxiety in the brain
• One recommendation for teachers (36:48)
• Take aways (38:33)
  • Episode with Dr. Tony Wagner
  • “Focused leaders say no.” - Dr. Jackie Kapushion
  • Episode with Cal Newport
  • Yuval Noah Harari & the imagined order
  • Mindful Way Workbook; The Onward Workbook by Elena Aguilar
• Mark Pearson, Libro.FM
  • Free Audiobooks for teachers; find out more at: https://libro.fm/alc-program