John Medina, _Brain Rules_ (2008)and Connections to the Arts

In his 2008 book, Brain Rules, developmental molecular biologist and researcher, John Medina, mentions 12 rules that govern the brain.  These are

1. Exercise: Exercise boosts brain power
2. Survival: The human brain evolved, too.
3. Wiring: Every brain is wired differently.
4. Attention: We don't pay attention to boring things.
5. Short-Term Memory: Repeat to remember.
6. Long-Term Memory: Remember to repeat.
7. Sleep: Sleep well, think well.
8. Stress: Stressed brains don't learn the same way.
9. Sensory Integration: Stimulate more of the senses.
10. Vision: Vision trumps all other senses.
11. Gender: Male and female brains are different.
12. Exploration: We are powerful and natural explorers.

What might Medina's rules suggest, when it comes to the value of the arts in education?  My thoughts:

• Exercise has a beneficial effect on cognition, as it increases blood flow, thus creating new blood vessels.  More exercise improves the body's ability to feed tissues and remove toxic waste, promoting health.  Exercise also stimulates BDNF (Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor), which acts as fertilizer for brain neurons.  It keeps existing neuons healthy and also encourages neurogenesis: the formation of new cells in the brain, particularly in the hippocampus, a region involved in cognition. Drama, as it incorporates movement, might tap into the salutory nature of exercise.
• Integration of the arts, both visual and performing, acknowledges the human inclination for novelty, potentially arousing attention and interest regarding instructional content. 
• Studies of synesthesia show that sensory processes are wired to work together.  Medina hypothesizes that learning abilities are increasingly optimized the more multisensory the environment becomes.  Arts integration enriches curricular instruction.  We also know that counter-intuitively, extra information ("elaboration" in scientific jargon) provided at the moment of learning makes learning better.  Medina suggests that if repeating information in timed intervals stabilizes memory, then the stabilizing effect might be further enhanced through encoding key information via diverse modes of presentation, thereby increasing retention.
• Richard Mayer, cognitive psychologist has noted three important principles in regard to multimedia presentations, working memory, and learning:
• Multimedia principle: Students learn better from words and pictures than words alone.
• Temporal contiguity principle: Learning's better when corresponding words and pictures are presented simultaneously, not successively.
• Modality principle: Students learn better from animation and narration than from animation and on-screen text.
• Emotion affects motivation, also can highlight particular inputs for closer inspection.  Emotionally-charged events are better remembered than neutral ones; also, the brain remembers the emotional components of an experience more than any other aspect.  Might arts integration provide that emotional impetus to aid retention?
• We learn and remember best through pictures, not written or spoken words.