Brain Rules: From Emotions to Multitasking

Excerpt from John Medina’s book “Brain Rules,” exploring the connection between attention and emotions, our passion for the essence of things, and the myth of multitasking—topics we encounter every day.

The human brain easily handles the most sophisticated information transmission system on Earth, reading tiny black symbols on a sheet of bleached wood pulp and understanding their meaning. To create this miracle, it sends an electrical impulse along wires stretching hundreds of kilometers to brain cells so tiny that thousands could fit in this line. And all this happens so quickly that you don’t even have time to blink. In fact, you just did. And the most incredible thing is that most people have no idea how the brain works. This ignorance leads to strange consequences. We try to talk on the phone while driving, even though the human brain isn’t designed to handle multiple attention-demanding tasks at once. We’ve created stressful office environments, but such conditions reduce brain productivity. The school system is set up so that most learning happens at home. It would be funny if it weren’t so harmful to humanity. Unfortunately, brain researchers rarely communicate with teachers, professionals, education leaders, accountants, or business executives. You don’t have the information unless you’re reading Neuroscience magazine over coffee.

That’s how John Medina, molecular biologist and director of the Brain Center for Applied Research at Seattle Pacific University, and professor of bioengineering at the University of Washington School of Medicine, opens his book Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School. The entire book is an attempt to fix this situation and explain in an accessible way what the brain is and how to use it properly. Medina summarizes all known facts about the brain and highlights 12 principles of how our enlightened, thinking organ works. In short, here they are:

• Our brain is a product of evolution, so it works according to historical needs.
• Physical activity stimulates brain function.
• Each person’s brain has different electrical conductivity—this is why we all perceive information differently.
• The mechanism of memory is much more complex than we imagine.
• Information is better remembered when multiple senses are involved.
• The brain ignores anything boring.
• Constant stress impairs brain function, while good sleep improves thinking.
• Women’s brains differ from men’s, but this does not affect cognitive processes.
• The brain can learn throughout life.

These may seem like well-known truths, but Medina’s achievement is that he explains the physiological processes and mechanisms behind these 12 principles in an engaging way. Dozens of fascinating examples from life, literature, and advertising help deepen our understanding and offer new perspectives. For example, how about this metaphor: “Memory is like a blender without a lid”? The entire book is filled with such insights.

Instead of retelling the whole book, here’s a short excerpt focusing on the connection between attention and emotions, our passion for the essence of things (not details), and the failed attempts at multitasking—things we all face daily.

Emotions Attract Attention

Events that trigger emotions are remembered better than neutral, ordinary events. This may seem obvious, but it underestimates the scientific aspect, as experts still debate what emotions really are. It’s important to understand how emotions affect learning. An emotionally charged event (often called an emotionally competent stimulus) is processed by the brain better than any other external stimulus. Such events stay in memory longer, and the memories are clearer than those of ordinary incidents.

This human trait is effectively used in TV advertising, which, of course, sparks much debate. Take, for example, a Volkswagen Passat commercial. The video starts with two men in a car, one of whom constantly uses the filler word “like.” Suddenly, another car appears in front of them, and they crash. There are screams, the sound of breaking glass, and the camera shows the men being thrown around and the wrecked car. In the final shot, the men stand next to the wreck, and the phrase “Safety happens” appears. The ad ends with the Passat, which received five stars in side-impact crash tests. This commercial is memorable—even moving—despite being only 30 seconds long, because it appeals to emotions.

But why does this work? The prefrontal cortex is involved—the only part of the human brain that manages executive functions like problem-solving, focusing attention, and suppressing emotional impulses. If the prefrontal cortex is the board chair, the cingulate gyrus is its personal assistant, filtering and maintaining connections with other brain parts, especially the amygdala, which creates and stores emotions. The amygdala is filled with the neurotransmitter dopamine and uses it like sticky notes. When the brain recognizes an emotionally charged stimulus, dopamine is released, helping with memory and information processing, as if posting a note: “Remember this!” With this chemical note, the brain processes the information more thoroughly. This is what every teacher, parent, or advertiser aims for.

Emotionally charged stimuli fall into two categories: events with personal significance and events perceived similarly by everyone.

For example, when my grandmother was angry (which was rare), she would go to the kitchen and loudly wash all the dishes. If there were pots and pans, she would bang them together on purpose, signaling her distress to the whole apartment (if not the entire building). To this day, the sound of clanging pots gives me a fleeting sense of danger. My wife, whose mother never expressed emotions this way, doesn’t associate dish noise with emotions. This is an example of a unique emotional stimulus.

Universal stimuli come from our evolutionary heritage and have powerful potential for learning and work. Unsurprisingly, they follow Darwin’s theory of survival. The brain always analyzes these questions:

• Can I eat this? Can this eat me?
• Can I be friends with this? Will it be friends with me?
• Have I seen this before?

Our ancestors who didn’t remember their experiences with danger or food didn’t live long enough to pass on their genes. The human brain has many finely tuned systems for reproduction and danger recognition. With our great ability to compare, we constantly look for similarities in our environment and try to remember what we think we’ve seen before.

One of the best TV ads used all three principles. In 1984, Steve Hayden created an Apple computer commercial that won every award and set the standard for Super Bowl ads. The ad shows a blue hall filled with identically dressed, robot-like people. It’s as if they’re watching a film about 1984 in 1956. A man’s face fills the screen, shouting phrases like “Information purification!” and “Unification of thought!” The people absorb these messages like zombies. Then, a woman in athletic gear, holding a sledgehammer, runs through the hall. Her red shorts are the only color in the ad. She throws the hammer at the Big Brother screen, which explodes in a flash of light. The text reads: “On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like ‘1984.’”

All the above aspects are present. There’s nothing scarier than the totalitarian society described in George Orwell’s “1984.” The red shorts add a bit of sex appeal, but there’s another layer: the Mac is a woman, IBM is a man. In the 1980s, women gained new rights, and the ad highlights the battle of the sexes. The ad is full of meaning. Many had read the book or seen the film. Computer experts immediately recognized the reference to IBM, often called the Big Blue for its massive sales.

Essence Over Details

In advertising, the emotional appeal is remembered better than any detail. There’s a reason for this: the brain remembers the emotional components of an experience better than other aspects. You might forget the details of a minor car accident but easily recall the fear you felt trying to swerve to avoid a crash.

Research shows that emotional reactions focus attention on the “essence” of an experience, discarding details. Many scientists believe that memory is designed to retain the main idea, not the specifics. Over time, you can recall details if you remember the essence. So, our minds strive to form generalized concepts or events, not fleeting details. I’m sure the American game show Jeopardy! exists because we admire people who can do the reverse.

Of course, at work and school, detailed knowledge is crucial for success. Interestingly, you can learn to remember details by focusing on meaning. This was discovered thanks to a chance encounter in the 1980s between a brain scientist and a waiter.

Watching Jay-C take orders was like watching Ken Jennings play Jeopardy! Jay-C never wrote anything down but never made a mistake. The menu had over 500 items, which is impressive. He’d take orders from 20 people and get everything right. Jay-C worked at a restaurant frequented by Anders Ericsson, a brain researcher from the University of Colorado. Noticing Jay-C’s unusual abilities, Ericsson asked to study him. The secret was Jay-C’s well-developed organizational system: he always divided each order into categories like appetizers, temperature, and sides, then coded each item with a letter. Blue cheese salads were “B,” Thousand Island was “T,” and so on. He assigned letter codes to each customer and remembered them that way. This hierarchy of meaning made it easy to remember details.

Jay-C’s strategy is based on a well-known scientific principle: memory is reinforced by associations between concepts. Experiments have shown that logically grouped words are remembered 40% better than random ones. Including associations increases the number of items remembered. More “mental luggage” should make learning harder, but research shows the opposite. We can condense the meaning of several words into one, making it easier for the brain to recall details. So, essence over details.

John Bransford, a talented researcher and author of the successful book How People Learn, once wondered what distinguishes a novice from an expert in a subject. He identified six characteristics, one of which is relevant here: “Experts’ knowledge is not just a list of facts and formulas; rather, it is organized around core concepts or ideas that guide their thinking in the field.”

Whether you’re a waiter or a brain scientist, if you want accuracy in details, don’t start by memorizing them. Focus on the key idea and build details around the main concepts.

The Brain Is Not Built for Multitasking

Brain Rule: Multitasking Is a Myth

Multitasking is a myth. The brain can only focus on one thing at a time. At first glance, this seems wrong: after all, you can walk and talk at the same time, or your brain controls your heartbeat while you read. Pianists play with both hands at once. Of course, these are forms of multitasking. But I’m talking about the brain’s ability to pay attention. You try to force this resource when listening to a boring lecture at school or during an uninteresting presentation at work. You can’t pay attention to different things at once.

Recently, I agreed to help my son’s high school friend with homework, and I’ll never forget the experience. Eric had been working on his laptop for about half an hour when I entered. He had an iPod around his neck, with Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, and Green Day playing in his headphones; he tapped the rhythm with his left hand. At least eleven windows were open on his screen, with two active MySpace chats. Another window was loading a Google image. In the background, he was editing a picture for a MySpace friend, and another window had a paused tennis video game.

Somewhere among all these tasks was a word processor with the document he needed help with. “Music helps me concentrate,” Eric said on his cell phone. “I’m doing fine in school, I’m just stuck. Thanks for coming.” He really was stuck. Eric read a sentence or two, then typed a MySpace message, checked if the image had loaded, and went back to work. He wasn’t focused on the assignment. Sound familiar?

Research has settled the debate: people can’t multitask. The brain isn’t built to process multiple attention-demanding signals at once. Eric, like all of us, was just switching from one task to another. To understand this, let’s look at the third part of Posner’s “Trinity”—the executive system. Here’s how it works for Eric when he tries to work on his assignment and gets a “You’ve got mail!” message from his girlfriend Emily.

1. Switching the alert signal: When Eric starts his assignment, blood flows to the front of the prefrontal cortex. This part of the executive system acts as a switchboard, alerting the brain to shift attention.
2. Activation rule for Task #1: The alert signal is a two-part message; an electrical signal races through Eric’s head. The first part searches for neurons to do the assignment. The second part activates them. This process, called the activation rule, takes tenths of a second. Eric starts working.
3. Disengagement: While Eric types, his sensory system detects a new email from Emily. Since writing the assignment is different from replying to Emily, Eric’s brain must disengage from one task and switch to another. The switchboard alerts the brain to the upcoming change.
4. Activation rule for Task #2: A new two-part message searches for the protocol to reply to Emily. The first part searches for the rules, the second activates them. Now Eric can pour out his heart to his girlfriend. As before, the switch takes tenths of a second.

Incredibly, these four steps happen every time Eric switches tasks. This process is labor-intensive and constant. That’s why people aren’t built for multitasking. You’ve probably noticed losing your train of thought and having to start over. Every time you switch, you mutter, “Now, where was I?” The only thing you can say about so-called multitaskers is that they have good memories for multiple signals—but only one at a time.

Research shows that if you’re interrupted, it takes one and a half times longer to finish a task, and you make twice as many mistakes. Some people, mostly young, switch between tasks more easily. If you’re familiar with the tasks, you’ll make fewer mistakes and finish faster than with unfamiliar ones. But for the brain, constant switching is like trying to put your left shoe on your right foot.

A good example is driving while talking on a cell phone. Before scientists studied how distracting phones are, no one realized how much talking interferes with driving. Chatting behind the wheel is like driving drunk. Remember, switching tasks takes tenths of a second. Drivers who talk on the phone are half a second slower to hit the brakes in emergencies, slower to regain speed, and don’t keep proper distance. At over 60 mph, a car travels about 50 feet in half a second. Since 80% of accidents happen within three seconds due to inattention, every switch increases your risk. More than 50% of visual cues noticed by attentive drivers are missed by phone users. No wonder they crash more often than anyone except the very drunk.

This applies not only to phone calls but also to putting on makeup, eating, or even choking on gum during a crash. Even reaching for something while driving increases accident risk ninefold. Given what we know about how the brain works, this is no surprise.