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John Medina Biography

John J. Medina is a developmental molecular biologist with special research interests in the isolation and characterization of genes involved in human brain development and the genetics of psychiatric disorders. Medina has spent most of his professional life as an analytical research consultant, working primarily in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries on research issues related to mental health.

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John Medina Quotes

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.

Brain, Meteorological, Problem, Unstable

Though we have been stuffing them into classrooms and cubicles for decades, our brains actually were built to survive in jungles and grasslands. A lifetime of exercise can result in a sometimes astonishing elevation in cognitive performance, compared with those who are sedentary.

Astonishing, Brain, Cubicles, Exercise, Lifetime

A factory worker at an assembly line, who can learn their job in 5 minutes, can get bored fairly easily, and disengage completely.

Bored, Completely, Easily, Job, Jobs, Lines

If managers knew how deeply their behaviors could affect brain function - whether they are piling up too much work on someone or yelling at them for "motivational purposes", they would quit doing it.

Affect, Brain, Purpose, Quit, Yelling

There are estimates that we daily walked for 10 - 20 kilometers for hundreds of thousands of years. The world's best problem solving machinery grew up under conditions of consistent, strenuous physical activity. It makes sense that when we don't recreate the environments in which the organ was forged, we get a loss of function. And that when we do restore those environments, we get that function back. The effects of aerobic exercise on executive function skills is a powerful empirical example of this idea.

Exercise, Loss, Powerful, Under, Years

There are nature and nurture components to virtually every behavior a human experiences. The research effort lies only in finding the relevant percentages, not on some absolute value. That's one of the reasons behavioral scientists have to be really good statisticians.

Effort, Lying, Nurture, Percentages, Relevant, Research

We must do a better job of encouraging lifelong curiosity.

Curiosity, Job, Jobs, Lifelong

I have great confidence in human curiosity - even though I don't know what curiosity is from a biological point of view. One of its characteristics has got to be the willingness to explore.

Characteristics, Confidence, Curiosity, Human, View, Views

You can practice for 30 years and still not be a Mozart. The most lethal combination would be a Mozart who practiced for thousands of hours.

Lethal, Practice, Practiced, Would Be, Years

The brain doesn't care about change. As the world's most sophisticated survival organ, the brain cares about loss.

Brain, Loss, Sophisticated, Survival

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

Memories, Stress, Parent, Significantly, Choose

Women tend to recall the details of an emotionally competent stimulus, using more of their left hemisphere to do the processing. Men tend to recall the gist aspects of an emotionally competent stimulus, using more of their right hemisphere to do the processing.

Details, Emotionally, Gist, Hemisphere, Men, Tend

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.

Children, Home, Kids, Reform

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.

Air, Discovery, Ecology, Lived, Occurred, Tea Leaves

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

Loss, Change, Risky, Experience, Involves

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.

Brain, Cubicle, Design, Like, Start, Starting Over

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.

Brain, Capable, Home, Single, Wherever

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

Brain, Looks, Medina, Literally, Learn, Physically

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

Attention, Business, Keep, Minutes, Seconds

I think the most incredible fact about the brain is that it is the only piece of biological real estate that can actually study itself. I can think about that for decades - I have, actually - and still be in drop dead amazement.

Brain, Estate, Fact, Incredible, Real, Thinking

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