I’m working on expanding my list of books on the left to include some of the resources I haven’t yet reviewed on the site, and going forward I’ll be posting reviews of books I’ve read recently or some time ago, eventually linking to the reviews from the book list on the left. (The book reviews are in addition to my regular Monday, Wednesday, and Friday articles.)

John Medina’s book Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School is a fascinating read both for its content and because it is written about how we think and learn, so that it uses some of its own strategies to become more effective. For instance, Medina talks about how much more powerfully highly emotional situations imprint on our memories, and he uses several emotionally-charged situations in the book to illustrate his principles, helping make them more likely to sink in. As another example, he talks about the profound improvement we experience in learning when visuals are added to spoken or written words, and he helpfully supplies a very visual Web site, www.brainrules.net, to help underscore the points in his book.

Medina is a developmental molecular biologist who knows his stuff in great detail and isn’t shy about bringing in practical research from all quarters, which makes a much stronger case for the information he presents.

Several of his brain rules are extremely meaningful to our daily lives: the sections on exercise, short-term memory, sleep, and vision struck me particularly. Some of his other brain rules seem to be less profound and less useful, although there is some useful material in each of the twelve chapters.

Toward the end of each chapter, Medina offers ideas on how the information could be put into use. Unfortunately, he offers this information as a scientist does, coming up with hypotheses about what might work in classrooms or workplaces and suggesting that people try these things on a large scale to see how they work. That’s great, but it’s not much use to us in the trenches who are trying to find better ways to teach children or accomplish work or cooperate. I would rather he had focused on things that had already been tried and documented and pointed out where there were practices that could be adopted for definite gains. At least, though, there’s a chance that his suggestions for experiments will inspire other scientists to tackle those experiments, and if we’re lucky, Medina will follow up with another book.

A comment on this entry on the “My Life as a Fat Woman” blog pointed out a press release for a study just published in the American Journal of Physiology. What the study strongly suggests is that if a person loses weight, continued exercise will reduce appetite and help their body remember to burn fat first and carbohydrates later, warding off a weight rebound. This is above and beyond the direct calorie-burning benefits of exercise! If a person loses weight and then doesn’t exercise regularly, their body will be eager to replenish the fat supply, and weight will often rebound above the original level (which is unkind of it, if you ask me).

For the full details, read the press release here , or get the full article in all its technical and scientific glory.

There’s a short but intriguing article on More magazine’s Web site called The One Exercise Motivation That Really Works. In it, psychologist Michelle Segar is briefly interviewed about reasons for exercising; her conclusion is that most of the people she’s studied exercise for the least motivating reasons.

While the article is aimed specifically at women in their 40’s and up, the points in it are potentially useful for pretty much anyone. Here’s the money quote: “Only 26 percent of the women in my study said they exercised for mental health benefits, but those women exercised 30 percent more often than those who stated their top reason as physical health benefits or weight loss.” By “mental health benefits,” she’s referring to exercising because it relieves stress and increases happiness.