“When we bring deep awareness to whatever's bothering us, the same things might be happening, but we are able to relate to them differently.”
Source: Real Happiness at Work: Meditations for Accomplishment, Achievement, and Peace
“There is no greater predictor of human well-being than the amount of social time we spend with one another.”
Source: Life's Great Question: Discover How You Contribute To The World
“When I started training myself in Neurobiology, Psychology and Theology, mostly on the streets of Calcutta, at the book kiosks on the sidewalk, for I had no money to buy the books, I had no academic background - no college degree - no potential for earning a decent living - I was a direction-less canoe in the open sea. I did not come from a rich or learned family, nor did I have rich friends, so, as far as everybody else was concerned, my life was doomed. I come from the humblest of origins - like did Ramanujan, like did Tesla, like did many more legendary thinkers of human history. I didn't know the rules of academia - I didn't know the laws and the norms of the scientific community - all I knew was that I had to understand the humans if I were to unite them. Other than that, I had no clue to my future. I learnt by failing - I learnt by making errors - I learnt by moving slowly but surely, and by never losing my sense of awe. And that's really what science is about - it's about naivety, curiosity and awe.”
Source: Mission Reality
“That day, the great mind in neuroscience Michael A. Persinger, who is now a good friend of mine, made me realize that it was no other field of Science but Neuroscience that held the key to solving the quintessential problems of consciousness. He coaxed me into the science of the neurons and the rest as you know is history. Without Persinger, Naskar and Neuroscience would never have been linked together.
Imbued with new knowledge, confidence and excessive curiosity, I officially turned my attention to one of the loftiest goals of modern science - understanding the biological nature of the human mind. That day on, I officially got into the world of Neuroscience.”
Source: Love, God & Neurons: Memoir of a scientist who found himself by getting lost
“How long do you need to be exposed to an image, such as a tattoo on your body or work of art on your home or office walls, in order for it to impact you? Neuroscientists from MIT found that the brain can identify images in about 13 milliseconds.
At 13 milliseconds, which is nearly ten times faster than an eye blink, your brain has already absorbed the image, even if you didn’t consciously see it with your attention focused elsewhere.”
Source: The Power of Tattoos: Twelve Hidden Energy Secrets of Body Art Every Tattoo Enthusiast Should Know
“Well there's these things called books.... They are like TV for smart people.”
“These Cro-Magnon people were identical to us: they had the same physique, the same brain, the same looks. And, unlike all previous hominids who roamed the earth, they could choke on food. That may seem a trifling point, but the slight evolutionary change that pushed man's larynx deeper into his throat, and thus made choking a possibility, also brought with it the possibility of sophisticated, well articulated speech.
Other mammals have no contact between their air passages and oesophagi. They can breathe and swallow at the same time, and there is no possibility of food going down the wrong way. But with Homo sapiens food and drink must pass over the larynx on the way to the gullet and thus there is a constant risk that some will be inadvertently inhaled. In modern humans, the lowered larynx isn't in position from birth. It descends sometime between the ages of three and five months - curiously, the precise period when babies are likely to suffer from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. At all events, the descended larynx explains why you can speak and your dog cannot.”
Source: The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way
“What is it about maps? I could look at them all day, intently studying the names of towns and villages I have never heard of and will never visit, tracing the course of obscure rivers, checking elevations, consulting the marginal notes to see what a little circle with a flag on it signifies and what's the difference between a pictogram of an airplane with a circle around it and one without, issuing small profound "hmmmms" and nodding my head gravely without having the faintest idea why.”
Source: Neither here nor there: travels in Europe
“Women are much better than men in tactile sensitivity with their fingers, but possibly only because they have smaller hands and, therefore, a denser network of receptors.”
Source: The Body: A Guide for Occupants
“Time moves in one direction, memory another. We are that strange species that constructs artifacts intended to counter the natural flow of forgetting.”
Source: Distrust That Particular Flavor