Brain Science: “Brain Rules” Podcast

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

———–

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.