Brain Rule #10: Vision trumps all other senses

I've mentioned John Medina and his book Brain Rules before. It's chock full of good information and I highly recommend you pick it up. Below is one of the Brain Rules that most applies to the topic of using PowerPoint in preaching. If vision is so drastically important to effectively communicating, then we'd better do something about it.

BRAIN RULE RUNDOWN

Rule #10: Vision trumps all other senses.

• We are incredible at remembering pictures. Hear a piece of information, and three days later you'll remember 10% of it. Add a picture and you'll remember 65%.
• Pictures beat text as well, in part because reading is so inefficient for us. Our brain sees words as lots of tiny pictures, and we have to identify certain features in the letters to be able to read them. That takes time.
• Why is vision such a big deal to us? Perhaps because it's how we've always apprehended major threats, food supplies and reproductive opportunity.
• Toss your PowerPoint presentations. It’s text-based (nearly 40 words per slide), with six hierarchical levels of chapters and subheads—all words. Professionals everywhere need to know about the incredible inefficiency of text-based information and the incredible effects of images. Burn your current PowerPoint presentations and make new ones.