Best 3808 quotes in «brain quotes» category

Archaic humans paid for their large brains in two ways. Firstly, they spent more time in search of food. Secondly, their muscles atrophied. Like a government diverting money from defence to education, humans diverted energy from biceps to neurons.

A researcher that has a brain that functions differently from their peers is at an advantage, as they can see things that the others cannot.

Are you all right, Sir?" asked Hezekiah. "Just fighting over old battles in my mind," said John. "It's the problem with age. You have all these rusty arguments, and no quarrel to use them in. My brain is a museum, but alas, I'm the only visitor, and even I am not terribly interested in the displays." Hezekiah laughed, but there was affection in it. "I would love nothing better than to visit there. But I'm afraid I'd be tempted to loot the place, and carry it all away with me.

Are you a lark, an owl or a hummingbird? Lark, also called early chronotype, is someone who does usually wake up very early. They are most active during morning around 6:00 am. Approximately 10% of people are larks. Owl, also called late chronotype, is someome who does usually wake up very late. They are most active in the evening around 6:00 pm. They usually drink a lot of coffee and accumulate a massive sleep debt as they go through life. Approximately 10% of people are owls. The rest, around 80% of people, are hummingbirds. Some hummingbirds are more larkish, some more owlish and some are in between.

Are there moments when our brains are not exercising?” I questioned. “That would be almost like being brain dead...

As a consequence of natural analgesic actions or as a result of the administration of drugs that interfere with body signaling (painkillers, anesthetics), the brain receives a distorted view of what the body state really is at the moment. We know that in situations of fear in which the brain chooses the running option rather than freezing, the brain stem disengages the part of the pain-transmission circuitry, a bit like pulling the plug. The periqueductal gray, which controls these responses, can also command the secretion of natural opioids and achieve precisely what taking an analgesic would achieve -- elimination of pain signals. In the strict sense, we are dealing here with a hallucination of the body because what the brain registers in its maps and the conscious mind feels do not correspond to the reality that might be perceived. Whenever we ingest molecules the have the power to modify the transmission or mapping of body signals, we play on this mechanism. Alcohol does it; so do analgesics and anesthetics, as well as countless drugs of abuse. It is patently clear that, other than out of curiousity, humans are drawn to such molecules because of their desire to generate feelings of well-being, feelings in which pain signals are obliterated and pleasure signals induced.

As more and more data flows from your body and brain to the smart machines via the biometric sensors, it will become easy for corporations and government agencies to know you, manipulate you, and make decisions on your behalf. Even more importantly, they could decipher the deep mechanisms of all bodies and brains, and thereby gain the power to engineer life. If we want to prevent a small elite from monopolising such godlike powers, and if we want to prevent humankind from splitting into biological castes, the key question is: who owns the data? Does the data about my DNA, my brain and my life belong to me, to the government, to a corporation, or to the human collective?

At the heart of the decoding problem is how to understand the vast information contained in neural signals, the challenge of what is being called "big data". For neuroscientists, big data is a means for exploring populations of neurons to discover the macroscopic signatures of dynamical systems, rather than attempting to make sense of the activity of individual neurons. Two surprising results from numerous experiments recording from neurons in different brain regions have revealed a wonderful secret of nature about the relation between the number of neurons recorded and and their dimensionality (the number of principal components required to explain a fixed percentage of variance). First, the dimensionality of the neural data is much smaller than the number of recorded neurons. Second, when dimensionality procedures are used to extract neuronal state dynamics, the resulting low-dimensional neural trajectories reveal portraits of the behavior of a dynamical system. This means that it may not be necessary to record from many more neurons within a brain region in order to accurately recover its internal state-space dynamics.

A typical Celestine will devote a large proportion of their time to passing through the inscribed sectors of the planet studying the writings, either alone or accompanied by companions with whom to share comments. This is a favourite pastime among them, and as they travel towards the boundaries of the inscribed regions they can watch the ongoing work of those Celestines that have been chosen to record their ideas – tirelessly twisting, pausing to gather energy, then exerting themselves again; painstakingly working the same patch of dust several thousand times over to shape each individual furrow; to capture, symbol by symbol, the knowledge they have contributed to the Celestine corpus. There is great pride and precision, as well as immense labour, in their toil. Before they commence work, the piece of ground that will house the writing will be chosen very carefully for its aspect. Then, the most favourable angle to the light will be calculated, for the orientation of the wording. The language used is of the most poetic and grandiose sort, quite different from the vernacular, and the symbols themselves are embellished with flourishes, extravagances and curlicues that are unique to the creator. Celestines love to observe this work, which constitutes the pinnacle of their art and of their ceaseless thought-endeavours, and embodies their very reason for being.

Audition requires different neurological processes than vision, or smell. And I would suggest that we hear more than we see while we are reading.

At times like this, Eryn didn't feel like they were just twins. They were teammates. They were partners. They were two halves of the same brain.

Be aware of the voices in your head. Identify them. Just became you hear it doesn’t mean it’s your voice saying it. And just because you think it doesn’t mean it’s true.

Be aware of the voices in your head. Identify them. Just because you hear it doesn’t mean it’s your voice saying it. And just because you think it doesn’t mean it’s true.

Be careful not to appear obsessively intellectual. When intelligence fills up, it overflows a parody.

Being healthy is a way of life. It’s not just about what you feed your body; it’s about what you feed your mind and the social environment you keep. Make healthy food choices, exercise your body and brain, and choose your friends wisely.

Be patient with him. If the same quality did not exist in you, you wouldn’t notice it in him.

Bhramari Om Chanting or Humming Om chanting sends positive messages to the brain and the cells in our body and can actually reprogram our health and behavior.

Biology, list history, is not built with 'if's.

Brain disease, heart disease, gastrointestinal disease and blood disorders were common in the radiation pioneers.

Brain + Heart + Soul = Power

Brain health is not to be hailed as a habit of the rich and famous, rather it must be made a worldwide trait of human existence.

Brilliance of the brain must be admired more than beauty of the body.

But there is no cause to concern because we now know, through the work of Dr Mark Rosenweig in Paris, that even if your brain were fed 10 items of data (each item being a simple word or image) every second for 100 years, it would still have used less than one-tenth of its storage capacity.

By all kinds of traps and sign-boards, threatening the extreme penalty of the divine law, exclude such trespassers from the only ground which can be sacred to you. It is so hard to forget what it is worse than useless to remember! If I am to be a thoroughfare, I prefer that it be of the mountain-brooks, the Parnassian streams, and not the town-sewers. There is inspiration, that gossip which comes to the ear of the attentive mind from the courts of heaven. There is the profane and stale revelation of the bar-room and the police court. The same ear is fitted to receive both communications. Only the character of the hearer determines to which it shall be open, and to which closed. I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality. Our very intellect shall be macadamized, as it were,--its foundation broken into fragments for the wheels of travel to roll over; and if you would know what will make for the most durable pavement, surpassing rolled stones, spruce blocks, and asphaltum, you have only to look into some of our minds which have been subjected to this treatment so long.

By assuming that IQ is real and quantitative, we can expect negative value from many people.

By offering flowers to the goddess what they are doing? The man is deceiving himself - deceiving the whole world. The yogic meaning of flowers is the brain-cells. Those who can sprout them to achieve Godhood, then that will be the proper offering.

Call me crazy and you would be right.

Cerebros sanos crean sociedad sana.

Concepts of memory tend to reflect the technology of the times. Plato and Aristotle saw memories as thoughts inscribed on wax tablets that could be erased easily and used again. These days, we tend to think of memory as a camera or a video recorder, filming, storing, and recycling the vast troves of data we accumulate throughout our lives. In practice, though, every memory we retain depends upon a chain of chemical interactions that connect millions of neurons to one another. Those neurons never touch; instead, they communicate through tiny gaps, or synapses, that surround each of them. Every neuron has branching filaments, called dendrites, that receive chemical signals from other nerve cells and send the information across the synapse to the body of the next cell. The typical human brain has trillions of these connections. When we learn something, chemicals in the brain strengthen the synapses that connect neurons. Long-term memories, built from new proteins, change those synaptic networks constantly; inevitably, some grow weaker and others, as they absorb new information, grow more powerful.

...Designers are generally unaware of the effects that their inventions have on the brain, and therefore take no responsibility of this role is deeply worrying. The world of design is like a highway, where each and every driver is asleep at the wheel.

Disappointment over love affairs generally has the effect of driving men to drink, and women to ruin; and this, because most people never learn the art of transmuting their strongest emotions into dreams of a constructive nature.

Does the brain control you or are you controlling the brain?

Doing your taxes with a brain injury is like having a tooth extracted without anesthetic.

As far as I'm concerned, Americans don't drink nearly enough. A good alcoholic poisoning of the brain now and then clears it out in a way that nothing else can.

A ship with a hole underneath is doomed to sink! And ignorance is also a hole in the brain, a big hole!

A significant number of people have their brain placed at the bottom half of their body. Thinking with the bottom half have made them extremely stupid and easy to manipulate.

As in all such technological nightmares, the principal task is to foresee what is possible; to educate use and misuse; and to prevent its organizational, bureaucratic and governmental abuse.

A slight concussion of the brain simplifies matters so beautifully. ("Three O'Clock")

As parents move from defensive processes to increased empathy for their children, the children's attachment security increases. Thus, on one side we have the continuity of psychic organization over time and the power of early experience to shape mind, brain, psyche, and behavior of both the individual and future generations. On the other side, there is the equally compelling evidence of the psyche's exquisite responsiveness to current conditions, especially when these conditions favor the activation of the individual's self-righting, self-healing mechanisms.

As the neo-cortex of the brain keeps getting more complex through further evolution, eventually our far away progeny will born in a world where there will be no more religion to be endowed upon them.

As your trillions of new connections continually form and re-form, the distinctive pattern means that no one like you has ever existed, or will ever exist again. The experience of your conscious awareness, right now, is unique to you. And because the physical stuff is constantly changing, we are too. We’re not fixed. From cradle to grave, we are works in progress.

At birth, your baby can distinguish between the sounds of every language that has ever been invented. Professor Patricia Kuhl, co-director of the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington, discovered this phenomenon. She calls kids at this age “citizens of the world”. Chomsky puts it this way: We are not born with the capacity to speak a specific language. We are born with the capacity to speak any language. Unfortunately, things don’t stay that way. By their first birthday, Kuhl found, babies can no longer distinguish between the sounds of every language on the planet. They can distinguish only between those to which they have been exposed in the past six months. A Japanese baby not exposed to “rake” and “lake” during her second six months of life cannot distinguish between those two sounds by the time she is 1 year old.

At the age of 49, I had been in the X-Ray radiation computerized tomography (CT) scanner for two brain scans, one nasal scan, and four lung scans.

At the bottom of every dilemma, he says, is fear, and the brain always prefers the bird in the hand to venturing into the bush, even if you are clutching a scrawny black crow.

Confusion causes creativity.

Confusion creates chaos, causing creativity.

Create space in your mind for the harsh memories too. Don’t ever cower from a teacher. Learn and live higher because you know how to use those dark memories as stepping-stones to think your way to a higher form of living.

Creativity and spirituality function on the same side of the brain. If that is true, it is quite reasonable and natural for them to function together. The prophets and mystics we're obviously aware of this connection. p. 23.

Don't ever let your day end in "could haves" and "should haves." Life is meant to be one experience after another. Say yes to everything that is good for you.

Dreams help us to consolidate our memories, to make sense of our new experiences and keep our emotions in check.