Quotes from John Medina

Teachers find many children emotionally distracted, so upset and preoccupied by the explosive drama of their own family lives that they are unable to concentrate on such mundane matters as multiplication tables.

The X chromosome does most of the heavy developmental lifting, while the little Y has been shedding its associated genes at a rate of about five every one million years, committing suicide in slow motion. It's now down to less than 100 genes. By comparison, the X chromosome carries about 1,500 genes, all necessary participants in embryonic construction projects. These are not showing any signs of decay.

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.

Just about every mental test possible was tried. No matter how it was measured, the answer was consistently yes: A lifetime of exercise results in a sometimes astonishing elevation in cognitive performance, compared with those who are sedentary.

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.

Regardless of who you are, the brain pays a great deal of attention to several questions: "Can I eat it? Will it eat me?" "Can I mate with it? Will it mate with me?" "Have I seen it before?

The perfect storm of occupational stress appears to be a combination of two factors: (1) a great deal is expected of you, and (2) you have no control over whether you will perform well.

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.

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.

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.

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

Babies are born with a deep desire to understand the world around them and an incessant curiosity that compels them to aggressively explore it. This need for explanation is so powerfully stitched into their experience that some scientists describe it as a drive, just as hunger and thirst and sex are drives.

The Mozart Effect comes to mind: the popular idea that listening to classical music makes students better at math.

We know when our actions fail to match our inner thoughts and feelings, but we often forget that this knowledge is not available to others.

But what you do in your child's first five years of life—not just the first year—profoundly influences how he or she will behave as an adult.

One of the reasons veteran parents don't focus on the hardness of having babies is that "hard" is not the whole story. It's not even the major part. The time you will actually spend with your kids is breathtakingly short. They will change very quickly. Eventually, your child will find a sleep schedule, turn to you for comfort, and learn from you both what to do and what not to do.

Is jumping out of an airplane inherently stressful? The answer is no, and that highlights the subjective nature of stress. The

That doesn't last. By their first birthday, Kuhl found, babies can no longer distinguish between the sounds of every language on the planet. They can distinguish only between those to which they have been exposed in the past six months.

a person who is interrupted takes 50 percent longer to accomplish a task and makes up to 50 percent more errors.

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.

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

There are four nutrients you will want in your behavioral formula, adjusting them as your baby gets older: breast-feeding, talking to your baby, guided play, and praising effort rather than accomplishment.

If I want it, it is mine. If I give it to you and change my mind later, it is mine. If I can take it away from you, it is mine. If we are building something together, all of the pieces are mine. If it looks just like mine, it is mine. If it is mine, it will never belong to anybody else, no matter what. If it is yours, it is mine.

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