Another worthwhile read: "Brain Rules" by John Medina (Scribe, 2011) describes in 12 chapters "what scientists know for sure about how our brains work".
* Exercise: boosts brain power (exercise gets blood to your brain, bringing glucose for energy and oxygen to soak up toxic electrons/aerobic exercise twice a week halves your risk of dementia)
* Survival:the human brain evolved, too
* Wiring: every brain is wired differently (what you do and learn in life physically changes what your brain looks like/no two people's brains store the same information in the same way in the same place)
* Attention: we don't pay attention to boring things (the brain's attention "spotlight" can focus on only one thing at a time)
* Short-term memory: repeat to remember (you can improve your changes of remembering something if you reproduce the environment in which you first put it into you brain)
* Long-term memory: remember to repeat (the way to make long-term memory more reliable is to incorporate new information gradually and repeat in timed intervals)
* Sleep: sleep well, think well (the brain is in a constant state of tension between cells and chemicals that try to put you to sleep and cells and chemicals that try to keep you awake)
* Stress: stressed brains don't lern the same way
* Sensory integration: stimulate more of the senses
* Vision: vision trumps all other senses
* Gender
* Exploration: we are powerful and natural explorers (some parts of our adult brain stay as malleable as a baby's, so we can create neurons and learn new things throughout our lives