Brain Quotes - Page 98

We can shape events in each other's brains with exquisite precision.

It's likely that taboo words are stored in the right hemisphere of the brain. Massive left hemisphere strokes or the entire surgical removal of the left hemisphere can leave people with no articulate speech other than the ability to swear, spout cliches and song lyrics.

The brain is not a bag of traits. It's startlingly complex. There are few or no single genes with a consistent effect on the mind.

A...reason we are so-so scientists is that our brains were shaped for fitness, not for truth. Sometimes truth is adaptive, but sometimes it is not.

The last 100 years of research into the human brain...sees the brain as an organ that works by physical principles just like the other organs in the body...our emotions and higher callings, such as religion, as well as our grubby low-level physical systems like stereo vision and motor control, are products of a machine.

Thinking is a physical process, the human brain is not exempt from evolution

I want good science, and I want it to be realistically marketed. I wouldn't like only two countries on the planet that allow pharmaceutical companies to market directly to people, New Zealand and the United States. It ought to be better regulated. And when it's presented to people, it ought to be presented in a way that's realistic. For example, often people will prescribe antidepressant medications, and we'll say, you have a brain disease; you'll have to be on these medications permanently. There is no biological marker for depression. It's not true that we know that it's a brain disease.

The prescribers very often overstate, oversell, and the detail people are only too happy to tell them to do that. This idea that there's something wrong with your brain, and by the way, almost never are these antidepressant medications evaluated with what will happen if you're on them for three, four, five, 10, 15 years. Sometimes some of the side effects that come up come up only later, and sometimes they're very severe, even irreversible side effects.

Our brains are fairly powerful, but our conscious minds are still extremely limited in their ability to hold onto multiple simultaneous thoughts

The increased rate of brain disease in the NFL population is caused by the way the game is played within the rules.

If I ever wanted to pick someone's brain, like Larry David would obviously be the most relevant.

I'm a Top 40 record guy. I remember the hits and don't remember the flops. Something in my brain blocks them out.

People know where romantic comedies are going. It's not brain surgery to figure out the end of a romantic comedy.

Your brain, like your tongue, is a muscle. Practicing thinking by yourself really helps develop your brain, which you need throughout your day. I like to practice my thinking in a darkened room, alone.

Hey, do you know what you call a blond with a brain?" I asked, and the continued on the same breath, "a golden retriever." I've heard that one, too," she said, no longer smiling. I'll keep trying." I promised.

What do I look like? The Wizard of Oz? You need a brain? You need a heart? Go ahead, take mine. Take everything I have.

Ew. Someone put the dog out, "Rosalie murmured wrinkling her nose. Have you herd this one, Psycho? how do a blond's brain cells die?" She didn't say anything. Well?" I asked."Do you know the punch line or not?" She looked pointedly at the TV and ignored me. Has she heard it?" I asked Edward. No." He answered. Awesome. So you'll enjoy this, bloodsucker--a blond's brain cells die alone.

Persistence goes a lot farther than brains.

Memory works according to meaning, and when something is important to you, the Google in your brain brings it forward all of a sudden.

Artwork is not thought up in consciousness and then, as a separate phase, executed by the hand. The hand surprises us creates and solves problems on its own. Often, enigmas that baffle our brains are dealt with easily, unconsciously, by the hand.

If you dream you do something, it's as if you actually are doing it from your brain's point of view.

C-C-Can you get bones in your buh-buh-brain?' Bill asked. This was turning into the most interesting conversation he'd had in weeks.

That's the day's business. Thinking. Thinking and isolation, because it doesn't matter if you pass the time of day with someone or not; in the end, you're alone. He seemed to have put in as many miles in his brain as he had with his feet. The thoughts kept coming and there was no way to deny them.

...we must be wary of granting too much power to natural selection by viewing all basic capacities of our brain as direct adaptations.

We are divided between those who think with their heads and those who know with their heart. Consider Harriet Miers. If you think about Harriet Miers, of course her nomination is absurd. But the President didn't say he thought about his selection. He said this: "I know her heart." Notice how he said nothing about her brain? He didn't have to. He feels the truth about Harriet Miers.