John Medina Quotes

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 brain remembers the emotional component of an experience better than any other aspect.

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

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

The more senses recruited at the moment of learning, the more likely you are to recall it later.

You don't have a work brain and a home brain. You have a single brain, one you carry with you wherever you go. Whatever affects you in one place is fully capable of affecting you at the other.

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.

Based on research into the Picture Superiority Effect, when we read text alone, we are likely to remember only 10 percent of the information 3 days later. If that information is presented to us as text combined with a relevant image, we are likely to remember 65 percent of the information 3 days later.

Don't start with the details. Start with the key ideas, and in a hierarchical fashion, form the details around these larger notions.

Empathy works so well because it does not require a solution. It requires only understanding.

The brain appears to have been designed to solve problems related to surviving in an outdoor setting, in unstable meteorological conditions, and to do so in near constant motion.

Our ability to adapt came from our East African birthplace, a meteorologically unstable place. If you couldn't adapt, you'd be dead. But once you've found a solution, there is no need to continue the adaptive behavioral parrying, which is bioenergetically very expensive to maintain. We are built to find answers, then hang on to them as long as we can.

The brain doesn't pay attention to boring things.

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.

There is a neuron in your brain that will respond only to pictures of Jennifer Aniston - provided you have had prior visual exposure to the actress. That neuron does not respond to pictures of Bill Clinton or Halle Berry. Only Jennifer. I used the story to explain the almost ridiculous plasticity of the organ. There is no such thing as Jennifer Aniston in our evolutionary history - she was born in 1969, for heaven's sake - but we are flexible enough to devote an entire cell to her if we have previously encountered her in some fashion.

Change often involves loss, so change can be a risky experience.

To improve short-term memory significantly, reduce the stress in your life. And choose your parents wisely.

Public speaking professionals say that you win or lose the battle to hold your audience in the first 30 seconds of a given presentation.

We must do a better job of encouraging lifelong curiosity.

Most brain scientists have not taught 4th grade, and don't know very much about the classroom, even though they might study learning in some detail. Most education professionals, who often know a tremendous amount about the classroom, don't know much about the brain. That is one of the reasons why I am so skeptical about applying brain findings to the classroom.

One of the greatest predictors of academic success that exist is the emotional stability of the home. So if parents are interested in education reform, they should also be interested in how they conduct themselves in front of their children. If they are homeschooling their kids, they are even more exposed, so the idea is even more important.

Historically, very few discoveries were made out of thin air. Most of the greatest insights depended upon the intellectual ecology in which the scientists lived. A certain critical mass of "new findings" occurred, and bright people all over the world found out about it, and several read the tea leaves the same way.

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.

Whether at work, home or school, everybody carries their brain around them, and if the organ suffers from a disorder, we carry the disorder around with us too.

We are human because we can fantasize.