Brain Quotes
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That's the thing about fiction writers: what seems alarming or particular or perverse about them is simply the shape of their brain - they cannot be otherwise.
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You never know where you're going to find the same thoughts in another brain, but when it happens you know it right off, just like you were connected by a small electrical wire that suddenly glows red hot and sparks.
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I'm quite interested in my own mental processes, simply because I'm a failed scientist, and because I'm interested in how the brain and the mind works, and I like to avoid easy descriptions.
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I understand what happens to the brain when people are near death, and I had always believed there were good scientific explanations for the heavenly out-of-body journeys described by those who narrowly escaped death.
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A typical neuron makes about ten thousand connections to neighboring neurons. 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.
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I was thinking on the rollers today that, before a race, if I could just pick my brain up and put it on the side of the track for four minutes, it would be perfect.
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Brain surgeons are dealing with the very last thread of life, and they have to be very confident, but I think they tend to remember their failures rather than their successes, and that must be very hard. Who do you share that failure with? That's why their personal lives are often disastrous.
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When I hit a block, regardless of what I am writing, what the subject matter is, or what's going on in the plot, I go back and I read Pablo Neruda's poetry. I don't actually speak Spanish, so I read it translation. But I always go back to Neruda. I don't know why, but it calms me, calms my brain.
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'A slave is one who must produce wealth for another,' the Brain said. 'There is only one true wealth in all the universe. I have given you some of it. I have given your father and your mate some of it. And your friends. This wealth is living time. Time. Are we slaves because we have given you more time to live?'
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The brain is the man; its health is essential for normal living; its disorders are surely the most profound of human miseries; and its destruction annihilates a person humanly, however intact his body.
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My left brain has gradually 'eaten' the right-brain capabilities away.
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Sometimes people who want to understand Haiti from a political perspective may be missing part of the picture. They also need to look at Haiti from a psychological perspective. Most of the elite suffer from psychogenic amnesia. That means it's not organic amnesia, such as damage caused by brain injury. It's just a matter of psychology.
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I've reached the point where people text me randomly for favors, like, 'Hey can I pick your brain?' People I haven't talked to in years are asking for favors. It's like, 'Wow people really got some nerve.'
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One of the interesting applications of symbolic systems is artificial intelligence, and I spent some time thinking about how to create a brain that operates the way ours does.
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It's a contract of connection to be in the same space and watch and listen to stories and be caught in them. When you're in a theater, your brain expands because somebody in the theater may do something or respond to something that you wouldn't have.
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Antidepressants are very good, but it's a clinical cosh, really. Sometimes you have to be knocked out, just to stop; when you're in that state all you want to do is just sleep, and rest your body and your brain.
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In any complex organism, brain formation and function must be controlled in part by genes.
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Sometimes my brain goes on CD shuffle. You know, you put a bunch of CD's on and hit play and random things come out.
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Non-violence, which is the quality of the heart, cannot come by an appeal to the brain.
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I'm a huge fan of meditation. I know lots of people assume meditation to be some Buddhist mumbo-jumbo, but it's been scientifically documented to create therapeutic changes in the brain.
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As I discussed in the previous chapter, attachment researchers have shown that our earliest caregivers don’t only feed us, dress us, and comfort us when we are upset; they shape the way our rapidly growing brain perceives reality. Our interactions with our caregivers convey what is safe and what is dangerous: whom we can count on and who will let us down; what we need to do to get our needs met. This information is embodied in the warp and woof of our brain circuitry and forms the template of how we think of ourselves and the world around us. These inner maps are remarkably stable across time.
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Build your self-esteem by recalling all the ways you have succeeded, and your brain will be filled with images of you making your achievements happen again and again. Give yourself permission to toot your own horn, and don't wait for anyone to praise you.
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That daydreaming mode turns out to be restorative. It's like hitting the reset button in your brain. And you don't get in that daydreaming mode typically by texting and Facebooking. You get in it by disengaging.
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How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god.
