The New Brain: How the Modern Age is Rewiring Your Mind
by Richard Restak, M.D.

What Does A Book on the Brain Have To Do With Leadership?
You may be wondering why we are reviewing a book on the brain. Of the many helpful items in your leadership toolkit, your brain is the one tool that enables you to use the rest! Leaders who understand and can use their brain efficiently hold a powerful competitive edge.

This book is one of many we are using for leading-edge scientific research we will share with you in our upcoming book on brain-compatible leadership strategies and tools. If you're intrigued and want to get started right away, check out our upcoming workshops, all of which integrate this new approach with best leadership practices to bring you a highly effective way for you to become the leader you want to be! See Upcoming Workshops below for more information.

LeaderStrength Rating System for this book:
Focus 4
Build 2
Adapt 4
Overall 3.3
*See how we rate in the column at the right

In The New Brain: How the Modern Age is Rewiring Your Mind, neurologist Richard Restak brings us up-to-date on some of the exciting new information scientists are uncovering using modern brain imaging techniques. Restak writes in an easy-to-read manner accessible to all of us. He focuses on aspects of our brain that are most affected by 21st century cultural conditions, and gives a glimpse into new technologies that will soon impact our lives.

For example, there is an entire chapter on Attention Deficit Disorder, which he calls “the brain syndrome of our era.” Have you felt overwhelmed by workload, life tasks, and a general excess of information and events? Restak explains that this is a technologically driven change in the brain that represents the biggest modification in brain function and structure in the last 200,000 years! Why technologically driven? Think of television, radio, computers, the internet, cell phones… We are bombarded daily by an abundance of information and connectedness that has never before been present. As Restak explains, our brains change in both functioning and structure in response to experience. In response to the rapid pace of our lives, we have become distracted, fragmented and, in a word, hyperactive. Our brains are trying to adapt to the increasing demands on our attention and focus by rapidly shifting attention from one activity to another. The technical term for the problem is “sensory overload”, meaning that our brain is being forced to manage increasing amounts of information within shorter and shorter time intervals. Restak asserts that the consequence is that ADD is becoming epidemic in both children and adults.

Restak cites research and offers valuable brain-compatible strategies for dealing with this situation. For example, he explains that multitasking is not as efficient as is generally thought. With each shift in attention, your frontal lobes (the executive control centers in your brain) must shift goals and activate new rules of operation. This shift can take up to seven-tenths of a second. The effect on performance was demonstrated in a study at Carnegie Mellon University, for example, which showed a 29% reduction in brain activity when subjects performed visual and auditory tasks simultaneously. A similar loss of efficiency occurs when activities are alternated. Restak’s conclusion: Our brains can actually work on only one thing at a time. The brain works most efficiently when it works on a single task for a sustained period of time.

This is only one example relevant for leaders. Another chapter discusses how to achieve exceptional performance. Restak explains that people with extraordinary abilities have learned to use their brains differently from the average person. For example, measurements of brain activity during a chess game reveal that grand masters activate their frontal and parietal cortices (brain areas involved in long-term memory), while skilled amateurs activate their medial temporal lobes (areas involved in coding new information.) This suggests that grand masters access years of stored memory, while amateurs use the less-effective strategy of analyzing on a case-by-case basis. It explains why the performance of grand masters against amateurs improves in timed games – they don’t need to think; they’re recognizing patterns and quickly assessing the consequences of any move.

Superior performers in other fields share this same brain pattern. Psychologist Anders Ericsson has studied geniuses, prodigies and other superior performers for 20 years. He has concluded that superior performers restrain the natural tendency towards automatic performance once a skill is learned. This keeps the frontal lobes activated, which allows ongoing conscious concentration, focus, monitoring, analysis, etc. Restak invites us to consider the difference between how we drive our cars and how race car drivers drive. We pay attention only long enough to learn how to do it, and then we drive with only a bit of our awareness on what we are doing. Expert drivers maintain intense concentration on every aspect of driving for continued performance improvement. Ericsson says this is how superior performers use their brains: they continue to intentionally focus on individual components of a skill to gain increasing control over performance.

Note that this is something anyone can do! Restak concludes that, while genetics play some part in true genius, anyone can achieve exceptional, superior performance by focusing with sufficient intensity on a chosen endeavor for a long period of time. This eventually rewires the brain so that it performs differently - and more efficiently - under performance pressure.

The book contains additional information on how modern brain technologies are enabling scientists to understand and influence brain functioning. There’s an intriguing chapter on new “designer” brain chemicals which are enabling scientists use chemicals to alter thought and behavior. We’re familiar with early versions of these in psychopharmacologic drugs such as Paxil or Zoloft. Newer drugs of interest to leaders in business and the learning professions are being developed for usages such as memory enhancement. Restak rightly points out that many these drugs come at a price; for example, when mood-altering drugs make it easy for people to endure situations they’d be better off changing.

We recommend this book to all who want to understand their brain so they can function at optimal levels of mental fitness. And particularly to those who choose to be leaders in any capacity. If we think of our brains as computers, most of us are using our word processing programs as typewriters! There’s so much more we can be and do, and the discovery of our greater abilities is very rewarding. We encourage you to learn and explore! This book is a great start.
 

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How Do We Evaluate Resources?

All of the books we review are evaluated on how they support a leader’s progress in applying our working definition of leadership.

We teach leaders to: Focus, Build, and Adapt:

Focus: A leader is able to see a new future

Build: A leader can build from his or her strengths as a foundation, adding on new skills, knowledge, and attitudes to create the new future.

Adapt: A leader is skilled at using feedback from their own thinking, other people’s reactions, and results/information from their environments to self-correct and keep moving toward the new future they envisioned.

Here is our rating system:

Outstanding 4

Good 3

Satisfactory 2

Unsatisfactory 1

Focus- How well does this book inspire a vision of a new future?

Build- How well does this book teach new knowledge and skills?

Adapt-How well does this book assist readers in examining and optimizing their own behaviors?

Overall Rating as a Leadership Resource: We average the ratings in the above three categories.