Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Brains are like representative democracies. They are built of multiple, overlapping experts who weigh in and compete over different choices.
Our internal life and external actions are steered by biological coctails to which we have neither immediate access nor direct acquaintance.
We will move from looking at correlations between brain activity and behaviour to studying how the brain causes mental states and behaviour.
It is an incontrovertible fact that if we want to make progress in basic areas of medicine and biology, we are going to have to use animals.
You can't just take an image and randomly distort it and call it art - although many people in La Jolla where I come from do precisely that.
As Carl Jung put it, "In each of us there is another whom we do not know." As Pink Floyd sang, "There's someone in my head, but it's not me."
Odor carries a great deal of information, including information about a potential mate's age, sex, fertility, identity, emotions, and health.
Some of the best navigators in the world are London taxi cab drivers. They have to learn 25,000 streets and how to get from one to the other.
The power of art is that it can connect us to one another, and to larger truths about what it means to be alive and what it means to be human.
Many people say some of their best ideas come from dreams. Arguably the greatest Beatles song, 'Yesterday,' came to Paul McCartney in a dream.
The way our brain is wired, we only see what we believe is possible. We match patterns that already exist within ourselves through conditioning.
Activities that promote mind-wandering, such as reading literature, going for a walk, exercising, or listening to music, are hugely restorative.
The propensity to play is situated in very ancient regions of the brain. Rats that have had their neocortex removed still engage in normal play.
With the arrival of humans, it has been said, the universe has suddenly become conscious of itself. This, truly, it the greatest mystery of all.
We spend our lives on a thin slice between the unimaginably small scales of the atoms that compose us and the infinitely large scales of galaxies.
If you are a carrier of a particular set of genes, your probability of committing a violent crime goes up by eight hundred and eighty-two percent.
When it comes to snowing people, one effective technique is to get a whole bunch of verifiable facts right and then add one or two that are untrue.
Anything you care about, from vacation plans to exercise to the best Ethiopian restaurant, is going to be guided by your individual search history.
The conscious mind is not at the center of the action in the brain; instead, it is far out on a distant edge, hearing but whispers of the activity.
One of the most impressive features of brains - and especially human brains - is the flexibility to learn almost any kind of task that comes its way.
Ask, 'How are we different from the great apes?' We have culture, we have civilisation, and we have language to be celebrated as part of being human.
In a country that was still racially segregated and prejudiced, music was among the first domains in which African-Americans thrived alongside whites.
We're trapped on this very thin slice of perception ... But even at that slice of reality that we call home, we're not seeing most of what's going on.
The first thing we learn from studying our own circuitry is a simple lesson: most of what we do and think and feel is not under our conscious control.
I'm sure our brains are working unconsciously. When you have a creative thought, it's parts of the brain talking to each other without your awareness.
Network Spinal Analysis represents the epitome of body work; it is at the leading of body/mind/spirit integration. This work will transform the planet.
Unfortunately, often found next to things that are true are an enormous number of things that are not - in websites, videos, books and on social media.
I spent my adult life as a scientist, and science is, essentially, the most successful approach we have to try and understand the vast mysteries around.
I know one lab that studies nicotine receptors and all the scientists are smokers, and another lab that studies impulse control and they're all overweight.
A glass is good, and a lass is good, And a pipe to smoke in cold weather; The world is good, and the people are good, And we 're all good fellows together.
Science is not the glamour that's portrayed in films. It's a lot of drudgery work, along with the wonderfully exciting periods when you discover something.
I do what I do merrily out of curiosity because I want to know how the brain works. That will get me up early in the morning and keep me going all day long.
A person can have the greatest idea in the world - completely different and novel - but if that person can't convince enough other people, it doesn't matter.
I can't say when we will have a cure, but we now know through our findings how to ask the question of what is going wrong at the earliest stage of Alzheimer's.
Multitasking creates a dopamine-addiction feedback loop, effectively rewarding the brain for losing focus and for constantly searching for external stimulation.
Given the billions of neurons, this means there are as many connections in a single cubic centimeter of brain tissue as there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy.
The amount of scientific information we've discovered in the last twenty years is more than all the discoveries up to that point, from the beginning of language.
I agree with the sentiment that it's probably more dangerous to believe some things that aren't so than to not believe something - you know, to believe in a lie.
Brain extenders are anything that get information out of our heads and into the physical world: calendars, key hooks by the front door, note pads, 'to do' lists.
President Trump, when challenged on facts, says that many people feel the way he does. But feelings should not take the place of reason in matters of public policy.
The first lesson about trusting your senses is: don't. Just because you believe something to be true, just because you know it's true, that doesn't mean it is true.
My interests span biology, though sometimes I feel like an anachronism, somebody from the Victorian era when there weren't so many boundaries dividing the sciences.
Simply bringing awareness to the process of breathing initiates the release of peptide molecules from the hindbrain to regulate breathing while unifying all systems.
Neurons are living cells with a metabolism. And they need glucose in order to function. Glucose is the fuel of the brain, just like gasoline is the fuel of your car.
There are not two sides to a story when one side is a lie. Journalists - and the rest of us - must stop giving equal time to things that don't have an opposing side.
Every week I get letters from people worldwide who feel that the possibilian point of view represents their understanding better than either religion or neo-atheism.
Without ducking responsibility, what's wrong with medicine today is that it is predicated on providing treatment, not on reducing suffering. Not on solving problems.
Science is like a love affair with nature; an elusive, tantalising mistress. It has all the turbulence, twists and turns of romantic love, but thats part of the game.
I have never seen a proton or electron spinning around it. I have never actually seen a chromosome. I trust that they exist because people who I trust tell me they do.
Science is like a love affair with nature; an elusive, tantalising mistress. It has all the turbulence, twists and turns of romantic love, but that's part of the game.