Read Online Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School by John Medina - Free Book Online
Authors: John Medina
Tags: Self-Help
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lots of animals in between slugs and humans. The Nobel Prize was awarded in part because his careful work described the thought processes of virtually every creature with the means to think.
We saw these physical changes while our submarine was puttering around the synaptic space between two neurons. As neurons learn, they swell, sway, and split. They break connections in one spot, glide over to a nearby region, and form connections with their new neighbors. Many stay put, simply strengthening their electrical connections with each other, increasing the efficiency of information transfer. You can get a headache just thinking about the fact that deep inside your brain, at this very moment, bits of neurons are moving around like reptiles, slithering to new spots, getting fat at one end or creating split ends. All so that you can remember a few things about Eric Kandel and his sea slugs.
But before Kandel, in the 18 th century, the Italian scientist Vincenzo Malacarne did a surprisingly modern series of biological experiments. He trained a group of birds to do complex tricks, killed them all, and dissected their brains. He found that his trained birds had more extensive folding patterns in specific regions of their brains than his untrained birds. Fifty years later, Charles Darwin noted similar differences between the brains of wild animals and their domestic counterparts. The brains in wild animals were 15 to 30 percent larger than those of their tame, domestic counterparts. It appeared that the cold, hard world forced the wild animals into a constant learning mode. Those experiences wired their heads much differently.
It is the same with humans. This can be observed in places ranging from New Orleans’s Zydeco beer halls to the staid palaces of the New York Philharmonic. Both are the natural habitat of violin players, and violin players have really strange brains when compared with non-violin players. The neural regions that control their left hands, where complex, fine motor movement is required on the strings, look as if they’ve been gorging on a high-fat diet. These regions are enlarged, swollen and crisscrossed with complex associations. By contrast, the areas controlling the right hand, which draws the bow, looks positively anorexic, with much less complexity.
The brain acts like a muscle: The more activity you do, the larger and more complex it can become. Whether that leads 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 yourself with the simple choice of which musical instrument—or professional sport—you play.
some assembly required
How does this fantastic biology work? Infants provide a front-row seat to one of the most remarkable construction projects on Earth. Every newly born brain should come with a sticker saying “some assembly required.” The human brain, only partially constructed at birth, won’t be fully assembled for years to come. The biggest construction programs aren’t finished until you are in your early 20s, with fine-tuning well into your mid-40s.
When babies are born, their brains have about the same number of connections as adults have. That doesn’t last long. By the time children are 3 years old, the connections in specific regions of their brains have doubled or even tripled. (This has given rise to the popular belief that infant brain development is the critical key to intellectual success in life. That’s not true, but that’s another story.) This doubling and tripling doesn’t last long, either. The brain soon takes thousands of tiny pruning shears and trims back a lot of this hard work. By the time children are 8 or so, they’re back to their adult numbers. And if kids never went through puberty, that would be the end of the story. In fact, it is only the middle of the story.
At puberty, the whole thing starts over again. Quite different regions in the brain
We saw these physical changes while our submarine was puttering around the synaptic space between two neurons. As neurons learn, they swell, sway, and split. They break connections in one spot, glide over to a nearby region, and form connections with their new neighbors. Many stay put, simply strengthening their electrical connections with each other, increasing the efficiency of information transfer. You can get a headache just thinking about the fact that deep inside your brain, at this very moment, bits of neurons are moving around like reptiles, slithering to new spots, getting fat at one end or creating split ends. All so that you can remember a few things about Eric Kandel and his sea slugs.
But before Kandel, in the 18 th century, the Italian scientist Vincenzo Malacarne did a surprisingly modern series of biological experiments. He trained a group of birds to do complex tricks, killed them all, and dissected their brains. He found that his trained birds had more extensive folding patterns in specific regions of their brains than his untrained birds. Fifty years later, Charles Darwin noted similar differences between the brains of wild animals and their domestic counterparts. The brains in wild animals were 15 to 30 percent larger than those of their tame, domestic counterparts. It appeared that the cold, hard world forced the wild animals into a constant learning mode. Those experiences wired their heads much differently.
It is the same with humans. This can be observed in places ranging from New Orleans’s Zydeco beer halls to the staid palaces of the New York Philharmonic. Both are the natural habitat of violin players, and violin players have really strange brains when compared with non-violin players. The neural regions that control their left hands, where complex, fine motor movement is required on the strings, look as if they’ve been gorging on a high-fat diet. These regions are enlarged, swollen and crisscrossed with complex associations. By contrast, the areas controlling the right hand, which draws the bow, looks positively anorexic, with much less complexity.
The brain acts like a muscle: The more activity you do, the larger and more complex it can become. Whether that leads 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 yourself with the simple choice of which musical instrument—or professional sport—you play.
some assembly required
How does this fantastic biology work? Infants provide a front-row seat to one of the most remarkable construction projects on Earth. Every newly born brain should come with a sticker saying “some assembly required.” The human brain, only partially constructed at birth, won’t be fully assembled for years to come. The biggest construction programs aren’t finished until you are in your early 20s, with fine-tuning well into your mid-40s.
When babies are born, their brains have about the same number of connections as adults have. That doesn’t last long. By the time children are 3 years old, the connections in specific regions of their brains have doubled or even tripled. (This has given rise to the popular belief that infant brain development is the critical key to intellectual success in life. That’s not true, but that’s another story.) This doubling and tripling doesn’t last long, either. The brain soon takes thousands of tiny pruning shears and trims back a lot of this hard work. By the time children are 8 or so, they’re back to their adult numbers. And if kids never went through puberty, that would be the end of the story. In fact, it is only the middle of the story.
At puberty, the whole thing starts over again. Quite different regions in the brain
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