Soundview Psychiatric | Seattle Mental Health Services

The John Medina Interview Roundup

Brain Rules — Wed, 22 May 2013 20:10:00 +0000

Just because Brain Rules and Brain Rules for Baby have been published doesn't mean that Dr. John Medina has stopped educating the public with his scientifically backed insights on how our brains work. Dr. Medina has kept busy by doing a variety of interviews for the wide audiences of readers who are interested in learning more about the Brain Rules. Here are the links to a few of them:

-At the Positive Business Blog, Dr. Medina discusses how using our brains better leads to doing better business--especially when it comes to Rule #8: stress.

-Stream or download Dr. Medina's interview with independent business radio station BFM 89.9.

-Business blogger Bob Morris sits down with Dr. Medina.

-Watch Dr. Medina's conversation with Microsoft's Mary Cullinane at the Innovative Education Forum.

-Listen to Dr. Medina's in-depth interview about a set of Brain Rules that are especially handy for teachers.

Brain Rules for Educators

Brain Rules — Mon, 06 May 2013 20:38:00 +0000

As anybody who has read Brain Rules knows, Dr. John Medina has a few bones to pick with how the traditional classroom is structured. If Dr. Medina were in charge, a typical day at school would be transformed in a myriad of ways that would increase levels of efficiency, permanence, and, well, fun while learning. Fortunately, educators are listening to Dr. Medina as well, and they're starting to share their thoughts with the rest of us:

-At The Huffington Post, Tom Vander Ark hypothesizes what a Brain Rules-inspired classroom would look like.

-Watch Dr. Medina's interview about which "brain rules" are myths and which ones are backed by scientific evidence in his interview with Mary Cullinane at the Microsoft Innovative Education Forum.

-Listen to Dr. Medina's in-depth discussion of Brain Rules for Teachers from the "Leaps and Bounds for Teachers" series from Berklee Faculty Development.

-You don't need to transform the entire educational system from the bottom up in order for the message Brain Rules to take a positive effect in your classroom: watch high school wrestling coach Mike Hagerty give his unsolicited praise detailing how Brain Rules has influenced his teaching.

Have you figured out new ways to integrate Brain Rules in your classroom? Don't hesitate to share and start a discussion with other educators at the Brain Rules Facebook page.

The NFL’s New Brain Rules

Brain Rules — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 23:56:00 +0000

You can always find Dr. John Medina's latest writing on brain research and how it affects our daily lives over at Brainstorm. Recently, Dr. Medina has been writing about how new knowledge about the brain could start having a direct impact on America's most popular sport: the NFL.

Like many of us, Dr. Medina is a long-time football fan, but the sport's future looks grim. Since so many current and former football players suffer from the debilitating brain injury CTE, there has been a growing public debate as to whether or not football is a safe game for anybody to consistently play. Dr. Medina points out that there are still significant gaps in research on CTE and its correlation with playing football, but sports fans could be hearing about this darker side of brain research for years to come.

You can read the entire series of Dr. Medina's posts on the NFL here.

New Brain Rules for Baby Videos

Brain Rules — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 22:42:00 +0000

We are excited for you to meet Brain Rules Baby, who shares parenting wisdom from Brain Rules for Baby in these 60-second videos.

Watch Out - Your Kids Are Watching You More Than You Think

That's right, kids are really good a imitation. Even a 13-month-old child can remember an event a week after a single exposure. Even when you don't realize it, your kids are watching the world around you. What you allow into your child's brain influences their expectations about the world, which in turn influences not only what they are capable of perceiving, but their very behavior.

View on YouTube

Under 2? No TV for you!

Americans 2 years of age and older now spend an average of four hours and 49 minutes per day in front of the TV—20 percent more than 10 years ago. And we are getting this exposure at younger and younger ages, made all the more complex because of the wide variety of digital screen time now available. In 2003, 77 percent of kids under 6 watched television every day. And children younger than 2 got two hours and five minutes of “screen time” with TVs and computers per day. The average American is exposed to about 100,000 words per day outside of work. Fully 45 percent of those words come from television. The fact is, the amount of TV a child should watch before the age of 2 is zero.

View on YouTube

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View the Brain Rules and Brain Rules for Baby videos in HD

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Raising a toast to the human brain

Brain Rules — Tue, 08 May 2012 23:22:00 +0000

John Medina discusses Brain Rules with Warren Etheredge at The High Bar.

Brain Rules for Meetings

Brain Rules — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 06:14:00 +0000

Molecular biologist John Medina, speaker and author of the best-selling book Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School, didn't set out to become a media star. But he got so fed up with encountering myths about the brain - that you use only 10 percent of it, for example, or that there are right- and left- brain personalities - that he once threw a magazine across a seat on an airplane. (The flight, he notes, wasn't full.) "So I decided to write Brain Rules," Medina said, "as an attempt to say, ‘Look, here's what we do know, here's what we don't know, here are a few things you can try that might have an application in the business world - and the meetings world as well.'"

Not that Brain Rules will tell you how the brain operates. "We don't know squat about how the brain works," said Medina, who has focused on brain research for nearly three decades. He added: "I don't know how you know how to pick up a glass of water and drink it. But we do know the conditions that [the brain] operates best in, even if we don't know all the ins and outs of that operation."

Which of the 12 Brain Rules has the most impact on meetings?
Well, probably, the biggest one would have to be about attentional states. This rule is very simple: People don't pay attention to boring things. So if you really want to have a lousy meeting, make sure it's boring. If you want to have a lousy classroom, make sure it's boring. And if you want to vaccinate against the types of things that really do bore the mind, we have some understanding of that.

So how do you design a good meeting?
Here are the top three "brain gadgets" that probably have a bearing on the question. First, the human brain processes meaning before it processes detail. Many people, when they put meetings together, actually don't even think about the meaning of what it is they're saying. They just go right to the detail. If you go to the detail, you've got yourself a bored audience. Congratulations.
Second, in terms of attentional states, we're not sure if this is brain science or not, but certainly in the behavioral literature, you've got 10 minutes with an audience before you will absolutely bore them. And you've got 30 seconds before they start asking the question, "Am I going to pay attention to you or not?" The instant you open your mouth, you are on the verge of having your audience check out. And since most people have been in meetings - 90 percent of which have bored them silly - they already have an immune response against you, particularly if you've got a PowerPoint slide up there.

How do you then hold attention?
This is what you have to do in 10 minutes. You have to pulse what I just said - the meaning before detail - into it. I call it a hook. At nine minutes and 59 seconds, you've got to give your audience a break from what it is that you've been saying and pulse to them once again the meaning of what you're saying.

What is the third "brain gadget"?
The brain cycles through six questions very, very quickly. Question No. 1 is "Will it eat me?" We pay tons of attention to threat. The second question is "Can I eat it?" I don't know if you have ever watched a cooking show and have loved what they are cooking, but you pay tons of attention if you think there's going to be an energy resource. Question No. 3 is highly Darwinian. The whole reason why you want to live in the first place is to project your genes to the next generation - that means sex. So Question No. 3 is "Can I mate with it?" And Question No. 4 is "Will it mate with me?"

It turns out we pay tons of attention to - it actually isn't sex per se, it's reproductive opportunity. [It is also] hooked up to the pleasure centers of your brain - the exact same centers you use when you laugh at something. Oddly enough, I think that's one of the reasons why humor can work. If you can pop a joke or at least tell an interesting story, it's actually inciting those areas of the brain that are otherwise devoted to sex. You don't become aroused by listening to a joke. I'm saying those areas of the brain can be co-opted. You can utilize them, and a good speaker knows how to do that.

What are Questions 5 and 6?
"Have I seen it before?" and "Have I never seen it before?" We are terrific pattern matchers. There is an element of surprise that comes when patterns don't match, but the reason why that happens is because we are trying to match patterns all the time.

Is there a Brain Rule that addresses whether you should try to control the use of laptops and phones during a meeting session?
I have this rule response, based on data, and then I have a visceral response, also based on data. In other words, I'm about ready to tell you a contradiction. Are you ready?

Yes, I am.
Alrighty. I do believe what you can show is that there are attentional blinks. The brain actually is a beautiful multitasker, but the attentional spotlight, which you use to pay attention to things, [is not]. You can't listen to a speaker and type what they are saying at the same time.

What you can show in the laboratory is that you get staccato-like attentional blinks. Just like you come up for air: You look at the speaker, then when you're writing, you cannot hear what the speaker is saying. Then you come up for air and hear the speaker again. So you're flipping back and forth between those two, and your ability to be engaged to hear what a speaker is saying is necessarily fragmented.
At the same time, if your speaker is boring, you could have checked out anyway. So you see, in many ways it depends upon the speaker.

How so?
If the speaker is really compelling and is clear and is emotion- ally competent, and has gone through those six questions, letting you come up for air every 10 minutes, I've actually watched audiences put their laptops away just to pay attention.

I have a style that is purposely a little speedier. And the rea- son why is that it produces a tension that says, "I need to pay attention closely to him or I'm going to lose what he's saying." I don't make it so fast that it's unintelligible - at least I hope I don't. But I do make it fast, and occasionally I see comments that say, "Great speaker, but you know, you were too freaking fast."

This interview originally appeared in the Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA) magazine Convene.

Soundview is moving

Dr. Madhavan — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 17:41:36 +0000

Starting January 2nd, my office will be moving to 620 Kirkland Way, Suite 202, Kirkland, WA 98033.

The new office is about 4 miles from the current location. The new office has a parking lot that is easier to access and will have features designed to provide a more discrete entry and exit. My practice has always been about combining highly effective psychiatric treatment with a thoughtful and comfortable patient experience. This move is an opportunity to more fully realize this vision.

What Humans Can Learn From Monkeys

Brain Rules — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 03:07:00 +0000

We are exploring the sometimes creepy, always fascinating distance between genes and behaviors. In this entry, I wish to illustrate a dramatic example of how nature and nurture interact, not by examining humans, but by considering some genetic next-door neighbors: vervet monkeys. This is a great example of “Learn from your parents — it’s good for you!” without a human parent in sight.

Vervet monkeys have interesting predator vocalizations, and even something of a vocabulary. The animals appear to be born with this ability — there’s our nature. As we shall see, however, the application requires some practice — and that’s our nurture. This is easily seen in vervet monkey foraging behaviors, whether the animals are searching for food on the ground or in the trees.

Vervet monkeys have a vocalization for the warning “Run, you idiot, there’s a snake on the ground!”, for example. When an adult vocalizes this warning, the whole tribe runs into the trees, and everyone is safe. They have another word for “Run, you idiot, there’s a predatory bird in the air!” When an adult vocalizes this warning, the whole tribe dives to the ground, and everyone is safe one again.

Note that I italicized the word “adult” throughout the previous paragraph. That’s because when the tribe hears a youngster vocalize either the snake or bird warning, the tribe doesn’t do anything. The members wait until they hear an adult say it. Why do they pause? Because the little ones often get the vocabulary mixed up. They have not yet learned the correct application of their handy early warning system.

The adults aren’t trying to be obnoxious. They are trying to avoid a disaster. Imagine the tragedy if the whole tribe responded to a juvenile’s call to hit the dirt when the little guy saw a snake. The funny cartoon version has him saying sheepishly, “Oops. I meant, trees” — but the deadly real world version is “no more tribe.” Little vervets may be born with the ability to warn others, but they have not yet been instructed on its proper use. They will eventually learn the correct behavior by persistent interactions with older members of the tribe, but the instruction set is not innate. They may have been born with pre-loaded vocalizing software. That doesn’t mean they know how to use it.

A very similar situation between biological ability and social experience is observed with humans, examples of which we will explore in the next few entries. We may come into this world with some pretty sophisticated DNA, but like our primate cousins, that is no guarantee we know how to use it.

How do you get a baby to sleep through the night? We have no idea.

Brain Rules — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 01:27:00 +0000

I am often asked why Brain Rules for Baby doesn't include advice on how to get your child to sleep through the night. The omission is deliberate, and my recent answer to one reader's question via e-mail explains the reasoning. I thought you would like to see the answer, too. Thanks for all of your interest in the book. It means a great deal.
-- John

Dear Reader;

You raise an important issue regarding sleep, one of the most critical in the early months of child-rearing. Unfortunately, I cannot give a response equal to its criticality.

If you are having problems with getting your child to sleep through the night, you have probably read everything you could on the issue. In that journey, you might have noticed there are many different opinions about how to get kids to sleep through the night - often by experts in the field. You might further have noticed that these well-established researchers and clinicians often appear to say contradictory things. The advice can almost be put into a continuum. On one end, there are researchers like Dr. Richard Ferber, interpreted as saying draconian things like “let your kid tough it out at night” (that’s hardly a fair characterization, by the way). On the other end is pediatrician William Sears and family who is interpreted as saying “respond to every demand at night” (also hardly a fair characterization). Here are the two references from these seasoned medical professionals, which make great comparative reading for the views they hold:

“Solve Your Childs’ Sleep Problems”,

Richard Ferber, 2006

and

“The Baby Sleep Book”

William Sears et al, 2005

Why the contradiction? BECAUSE NOBODY REALLY KNOWS HOW TO ADDRESS THE SLEEP ISSUE. There does not appear to be a one-size-fits-all answer, which is why any advice which claims to be THE ANSWER does not pass my “grump factor”, as a scientist. My standard response, therefore, is to appeal to the wisdom of the real expert, the parent – YOU – and say something like “Every brain is wired differently from every other brain. Go out and buy both of these books and expose yourself to the various recommendations. Then determine which strategies (or combinations of strategies) your child – based on your knowledge – is most likely to respond. Try these strategies in a systematic fashion, and progressively design new ones until you find the strategy that does work.”

I have an example of this flexible, deliberate approach in my own child-rearing experience.

It was almost seven months before my eldest child slept successfully through the night. What worked for me was to give him a “modified” Ferber protocol – a gentler version of his recommendation, which took almost a week to execute successfully (I literally took off time from work to do it, relieving my poor exhausted wife).

My youngest child also had trouble getting to sleep. But when I tried my “modified” Ferber strategy, it did not work for him. What did the trick was a modified “Sears” strategy. And it also took about a week to become successful too. Living proof for the fact there is no over-arching strategy that will work for every child.

I wish you well. Solving this riddle is one of the toughest tasks in the early years of child-rearing.

John Medina

Why is it So Hard to Get Kids To Do the Right Thing? (VIDEO)

Brain Rules — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 17:19:00 +0000

If children are born with a sense of right and wrong, as brain science shows, why don't they just do the right thing?

Part of the reason it's tough is that the moment children observe bad behavior, they have learned it. Even if the bad behavior is punished, it remains easily accessible in the child's brain. Psychologist Albert Bandura was able to show this with help from a clown.

In the 1960s, Bandura showed preschoolers a film involving a Bobo doll, one of those inflatable plastic clowns weighted on the bottom. In the film, an adult named Susan kicks and punches the doll, then repeatedly clobbers it with a hammer. After the film, the preschoolers are taken into another room filled with toys, including (surprise) a Bobo doll and a toy hammer.

What do the children do? It depends. If they saw a version of the film where Susan was praised for her violent actions, they hit the doll with great frequency. If they saw a version where Susan got punished, they hit Bobo with less frequency. But if Bandura then strides into the room and says, "I will give you a reward if you can repeat what you saw Susan do," the children will pick up a hammer and start swinging at Bobo.

Whether the children saw the violence as rewarded or punished, they learned the behavior. Bandura calls this "observational learning," and his finding is an extraordinary weapon of mass instruction. Observational learning plays a powerful role in moral reasoning.

How does moral reasoning develop? Slowly. Harvard psychologist Kohlberg believed that moral reasoning depended upon general cognitive maturity--another way of saying that these things take time. He outlined a progressive process:

1. Avoiding punishment. Moral reasoning starts out at a fairly primitive level, focused mostly on avoiding punishment. Kohlberg calls this stage pre-conventional moral reasoning.

2. Considering consequences. As a child's mind develops, she begins to consider the social consequences of her behaviors and starts to modify them accordingly. Kohlberg terms this conventional moral reasoning.

3. Acting on principle. Eventually, the child begins to base her behavioral choices on well-thought-out, objective moral principles, not just on avoidance of punishment or peer acceptance. Kohlberg calls this coveted stage post-conventional moral reasoning. One could argue that the goal of any parent is to land here.

This willingness to make the right choices--and to withstand pressure to make the wrong ones, even when the possibility of detection and punishment is zero--is the goal of moral development. We parents use rules and discipline, of course, to get our children to this stage.

In my book "Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to 5," I discuss the research-tested strategies that parents can use to aid moral development. At the end of the book, I gather practical tips, including these two:

CAP your rules

Discipline FIRST

Need one more? Read "A Magic Trick for Getting Kids to Follow Rules."

Watch more parenting videos or learn more about your baby's brain at brainrules.net.