We are fans of the Brain Sci­ence Pod­cast series hosted by Gin­ger Camp­bell, so are pleased to announce that Dr. Camp­bell will start offer­ing to Sharp­Brains read­ers, peri­od­i­cally, the high­lights of her most inter­est­ing pod­casts. Below, her first post. Enjoy!

- Alvaro

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In a recent inter­view on the Brain Sci­ence Pod­cast, Dr. John Med­ina, author of Brain Rules: 12 Prin­ci­ples for Sur­viv­ing and Thriv­ing at Work, Home, and School shared some of the prac­ti­cal impli­ca­tions of recent neu­ro­science research.

We talked about the impor­tance of exer­cise and sleep and we dis­cussed why appre­ci­at­ing how our mem­ory and atten­tion sys­tems really work could change how we run schools, busi­nesses, and even our daily lives.

For exam­ple, while ade­quate sleep is gen­er­ally acknowl­edged to be essen­tial to opti­mal men­tal func­tion, many peo­ple are chron­i­cally sleep deprived. Dr. Med­ina advises that the first thing an indi­vid­ual should do is deter­mine their own sleep style. While peo­ple who nat­u­rally arise early and go to bed early (“larks”) tend to per­form well in the tra­di­tional edu­ca­tion set­ting, those whose nat­ural cycle is to rise late and stay up late (what Med­ina calls “late chrono­types” or “night owls”) tend to accu­mu­late a huge sleep deficit that impairs their per­for­mance. Dr. Med­ina argues that schools and busi­nesses could run more effi­ciently if people’s sched­ules were bet­ter matched to their nat­ural rhythms. He advises peo­ple who are home school­ing their chil­dren to deter­mine their child’s nat­ural cycle since home school­ing pro­vides greater flex­i­bil­ity than the tra­di­tional school schedule.

Lis­ten to John Medina’s interview

Dr. Medina’s Brain Rules goes into 12 prin­ci­ples that any­one can apply in their daily lives. You can hear the rest of Dr. Medina’s inter­view on Episode 37 of the Brain Sci­ence Pod­cast and in iTunes™.

Gin­ger Camp­bell, MD grad­u­ated from the Uni­ver­sity of Alabama School of Med­i­cine. She also has a Master’s Degree in Bio­med­ical Engi­neer­ing and spent sev­eral years teach­ing at the Uni­ver­sity of Alabama in Birm­ing­ham. Dr. Camp­bell has been prac­tic­ing emer­gency med­i­cine since 1992. She started the Brain Sci­ence Pod­cast in 2006. Her goal is to help gen­eral audi­ences under­stand how recent dis­cov­er­ies in neu­ro­science are unrav­el­ing the mys­ter­ies of how our brains make us who we are.

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