Brain Rules (Updated and Expanded)

Conversations with Neil’s Brain
, he describes what happens next:
“Feel anything?”

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“Hey! Someone touched my hand,” Neil volunteers. Neither the
anesthesiologist nor I had come anywhere close to Neil’s hand.
“Which hand?” asks George.
“My right one, sort of like someone brushed the back side of it.
It’s still tingling a little.” The right hand reports to the left side of the
brain, and George evidently has located the hand area of [the]
somatosensory cortex with the stimulator.
Ojemann marks the area by putting a small sterile piece of paper on it.
He touches another spot. Neil says he feels something near his right cheek.
Another tiny piece of paper. This call and response goes on for hours. Like
a neural cartographer, Ojemann is mapping the various functions of his
patient’s brain, with special attention paid to the areas close to the epileptic
tissue.
These are tests of the patient’s motor skills. For reasons not well
understood, however, epileptic tissues are often disturbingly adjacent to
areas critical for language. So Ojemann also pays close attention to the
regions involved in language processing, where words and sentences and
grammatical concepts are stored. If the patient is bilingual, he will map
critical language areas for both Spanish and English. He applies a paper dot
marked 
S
to the regions where Spanish exists, and he applies a small 
E
where English is stored. Ojemann does this painstaking work with every
single patient who undergoes this type of surgery. Why? The answer is a
stunner. He has to map each individual’s critical function areas because 
he
doesn’t know where they are.
Ojemann can’t predict the function of very precise areas in advance of
the surgery because no two brains are wired identically. Not in terms of
structure. Not in terms of function. For example, from nouns to verbs to
aspects of grammar, we each store language in different areas, recruiting
different regions for different components. Bilingual people don’t even
store their Spanish and their English in similar places.
This individuality has fascinated Ojemann for years. He once combined
the brain maps for 117 patients he had operated on over the years. Only in
one region did he find a spot where most people had a critical language
area, and “most” means 79 percent of the patients.

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Data from electrical stimulation mapping give the most dramatic
illustration of the brain’s individuality. But Ojemann also wanted to know
how stable these differences were during life, and if any of those differences
predicted intellectual competence. He found interesting answers to both
questions. First, the brain’s road maps are established very early in life, and
they remain stable throughout. Even if a decade or two had passed between
surgeries, the brain region recruited to host a critical language area
remained the same. Second, Ojemann found that structural differences were
associated with performance on a language test (given before surgery). If
patients performed poorly on the test, the wiring pattern of their critical
language area tended to be widely distributed. It was tightly focused in
patients who performed well on the test. Lower scores on the test also
predicted that a patient’s critical language area had taken up residence in the
superior temporal gyrus, as opposed to another brain region. Again,
experience had wired each brain differently, with real-world consequences.
More ideas
Does it make any sense that most schools expect every child to learn like
every other? For example, we expect that kids should be able to read by age
6. Yet students of the same age show a great deal of intellectual variability.
Studies show that about 10 percent of students do 
not
have brains
sufficiently wired to read at that age. And does it make any sense that most
businesses strive to treat each employee the same, especially in a global
economy replete with various cultural experiences? As you can guess, I
don’t think so. Here are a few ideas for aligning our schools and businesses
with the way the brain works.
Smaller class size
All else being equal, it has been known for many years that smaller,
more intimate schools create better learning environments than megaplex
houses of learning. Smaller is better because a teacher can deeply
understand the individual needs of only so many students. If you are a
parent, you can look for (and lobby for) schools with smaller classes or a

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more favorable teacher-student ratio. A college student might consider
attending a smaller school. A manager looking to train employees should do
it in smaller groups.
Theory of Mind testing
As you may recall from the Introduction, Theory of Mind is about as
close to mind reading as humans get. It is the ability to understand the
interior motivations of someone else and the ability to construct a
predictable “theory of how their mind works.” Nearly all of us can do it, but
some of us are better at it than others.
Theory of Mind skills give teachers critical knowledge about their
students, a heightened sensitivity for when they are confused, when they are
fully engaged, and when they have truly learned what is being taught. I
have come to believe that people with advanced Theory of Mind skills
possess the single most important ingredient for effectively communicating
information. If I’m right, it’s possible that the best teachers possess
advanced Theory of Mind skills and the worst teachers don’t.
In the future, Theory of Mind tests should be as standard as IQ tests.
Schools and other organizations could use the tests to reveal the better
teachers. Companies could include Theory of Mind tests as they screen for
leaders. People considering careers as teachers or managers could take the
tests to help them decide whether they’re a good fit for the role.
Customized classrooms and workplaces
As an instructor teaches a class, students inevitably will experience
learning gaps. Left untreated, these gaps cause students to fall further
behind. Developers of educational apps are using software to determine
where a student’s competencies lie and then adaptively tailor exercises for
the student in order to fill in any gaps. The effect is greatest when the
software is integrated into a school program. In a large classroom, teacher
alone or software alone is not as effective. I would like to see more research
on this—as would parents and teachers anxious about the infiltration of
tablets into classrooms. Studies should include typical and optimized
student-teacher ratios.

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Parents could embrace the apps and pay close attention to the effect on
their kids. Parents could look for a school adopting the trend of a flipped
classroom, where students review the lecture at home before class. Class
time is instead spent on homework, and teachers give individualized help as
needed. Parents who are financially able might choose schools organized
around the idea that children learn different things at different speeds, such
as Montessori schools. Students can supplement school classes with free
online courses, which allow them to view and review material at their own
pace, such as those available through Khan Academy.
As for employees working at organizations who treat all people the
same way, it will be up to you to push for the things you value: the balance
of vacation time versus pay, a flexible schedule, the way your role within
the company works. If you’re a manager, make a list of the cognitive
strengths of your team. Some of your employees may be great at
memorizing things. Others may be better at quantitative tasks. Some have
good people skills. Some don’t. Assigning work projects based on an
employee’s strengths may be critical to your group’s productivity. You may
discover you had a Michael Jordan on your team but couldn’t see it because
you were only asking him to play baseball.