Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I think we've debunked the myth of talent. It doesn't appear that there's anything like a music gene or center in the brain that Stevie Wonder has that nobody else has.
If choices and decisions derive from hidden mental processes, then free choice is either an illusion or, at minimum, more tightly constrained than previously considered.
One of the most pervasive mistakes is to believe that our visual system gives a faithful representation of what is "out there" in the same way that a movie camera would.
The boundary between neurology and psychiatry is becoming increasingly blurred, and its only a matter of time before psychiatry becomes just another branch of neurology.
The boundary between neurology and psychiatry is becoming increasingly blurred, and it's only a matter of time before psychiatry becomes just another branch of neurology.
The mammalian brain evolved exquisite place memory because that was essential for survival. This is why squirrels have such a good memory for where they buried their nuts.
Britain punches way above its weight in science, and I think we need to continue to do that, and anything that makes it easier to bring scientists in will be very welcome.
When we are playing [games], we are stretching our emotional expressive ranges, loosening up our biochemical flow of information, getting unstuck, and healing our feelings.
A bowl of pudding only has taste when I put it in my mouth - when it is in contact with my tongue. It doesn't have taste or flavor sitting in my fridge, only the potential.
Mice deficient in this protein, called p11, display depression-like behaviors, while those with sufficient amounts behave as if they have been treated with antidepressants.
Music may be the activity that prepared our pre-human ancestors for speech communication and for the very cognitive, representational flexibility necessary to become humans.
What makes a set of lines and colors into art is the relationship between this line and that one; the way one color or form echoes another in a different part of the canvas.
Because humans, in effect, created dogs through domestication, the canine mind reflects back to us how we see ourselves through the eyes, ears, and noses of another species.
When people silo themselves by belief, only affiliating with like-minded media organizations and people, we lose the opportunity for genuine conversation, much less persuasion.
We're assaulted with facts, pseudo facts, jibber-jabber, and rumour, all posing as information. Trying to figure out what you need to know and what you can ignore is exhausting.
Our to-do lists are so full that we can't hope to complete every item on them. So what do we do? We multitask, juggling several things at once, trying to keep up by keeping busy.
People who organize their time in a way that allows them to focus are not only going to get more done, but they'll be less tired and less neurochemically depleted after doing it.
Creativity comes from the spiritual realm, the collective consciousness. And the mind is in a different realm than the molecules of the brain. The brain is a receiver, not a source.
Interestingly, schizophrenics can tickle themselves because of a problem with their timing that does not allow their motor actions and resulting sensations to be correctly sequenced.
Football is not a game but a religion, a metaphysical island of fundamental truth in a highly verbalized, disguised society, a throwback of 30,000 generations of anthropological time.
Science, math and engineering can give you the exhilarating power to become not mere spectators or consumers, but the active explorers, makers and doers who will help invent the future.
The constant nagging in your mind of undone things pulls you out of the present--tethers you to a mind-set of the future so that you're never fully in the moment and enjoying what's now.
I'm using the afterlife as a backdrop against which to explore the joys and complexities of being human - it turns out that it's a great lens with which to understand what matters to us.
We are not at the center of ourselves, but instead - like the Earth in the Milky Way, and the Milky Way in the universe - far out on a distant edge, hearing little of what is transpiring.
People often ask how I got interested in the brain; my rhetorical answer is: 'How can anyone NOT be interested in it?' Everything you call 'human nature' and consciousness arises from it.
It turns out your conscious mind - the part you think of as you - is really the smallest part of what’s happening in your brain, and usually the last one in line to find out any information.
One of the most important tools in critical thinking about numbers is to grant yourself permission to generate wrong answers to mathematical problems you encounter. Deliberately wrong answers!
There are a lot of books about how to get organized and a lot of books about how to be better and more productive at business, but I don't know of one that grounds any of these in the science.
To a space alien or a German Shepherd dog, two humans would be indistinguishable, just as attractive and unattractive space aliens and German Shepherd dogs are difficult for you to tell apart.
Asleep vision (dreaming) is perception that is not tied down to anything in the real world; waking perception is something like dreaming with a little more commitment to what's in front of you.
If there is anything about your 'self' of which you can be sure, it is that it is anchored in your own body and yours alone. The person you experience as 'you' is here and now and nowhere else.
Think about what artists, novelists and poets have in common: the ability to engage in metaphorical thinking, linking seemingly unrelated ideas, such as, 'It is the east, and Juliet is the Sun.'
Yet as human beings we have to accept-with humility-that the question of ultimate origins will always remain with us, no matter how deeply we understand the brain and the cosmos that it creates.
Knowing yourself now requires the understanding that the conscious you occupies only a small room in the mansion of the brain, and that it has little control over the reality constructed for you.
When we have learned something, there's this thing called belief perseverance. Having learned something, we tend to cling to that belief, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Awareness of your surroundings occurs only when sensory inputs violate expectations. When the world is successfully predicted away, awareness is not needed because the brain is doing its job well.
People have different styles: Some are filers and some are pilers. The people who pile things often know exactly where things are, and they're often just as organized as the people who file things.
The drives you take for granted ("I'm a hetero/homosexual," "I'm attracted to children/adults," "I'm aggressive/not aggressive," and so on) depend on the intricate details of your neural machinery.
Librarians are more important than ever before ... are uniquely qualified to help all of us separate the digital wheat from the chaff, to help us understand the reliability of the data we encounter.
The most fundamental principle of the organized mind, the one most critical to keeping us from forgetting or losing things, is to shift the burden of organizing from our brains to the external world.
The first forms of writing emerged not for art, literature, or love, not for spiritual or liturgical purposes, but for business--all literature could be said to originate from sales receipts (sorry).
Keep in mind that every single generation before us has worked under the assumption that they possessed all the major tools for understanding the universe, and they were all wrong, without exception.
Science is international: the best scientists can come from anywhere; they can come from next door, or they can come from a small village in a country anywhere in the world - we need to make it easier.
The chemicals that are running our body and our brain are the same chemicals that are involved in emotion. And that says to me that . . . wed better pay more attention to emotions with respect to health.
One big promise of the Internet was that it would be a great democratizing force, allowing us to become exposed to new ideas that we might not otherwise encounter in our town, workplace or social circle.
Here is a neuron that fires when I reach and grab something, but it also fires when I watch Joe reaching and grabbing something. ... It's as though this neuron is adopting the other person's point of view.
The missing crowds make you lonely. You begin to complain about all the people you could be meeting. But no one listens or sympathizes with you, because this is precisely what you chose when you were alive.
The visual system of the brain has the organization, computational profile, and architecture it has in order to facilitate the organism's thriving at the four Fs: feeding fleeing, fighting, and reproduction.
I believe in an informed electorate, and we need to teach our children to become informed enough to have opinions on world issues or, at least, to understand what the major issues are and who the players are.
Because our ancestors lived in social groups that changed slowly, because they encountered the same people throughout their lives, they could keep almost every social detail they needed to know in their heads.