Quotessence
Home / Topics / Neuroscience Quotes

Neuroscience Quotes

Browse 508 quotes about Neuroscience.

Related topics

BrainPsychologyThinkingCognitiveMind

Neuroscience Quotes

“Instincts are older, but thoughts are recent, that's why instincts are more powerful than thoughts - that's why it takes great will power to express a thought through action, while instincts come so easily. However, if we continue practicing our thoughts long enough, eventually the instincts that hold power over us will turn powerless. And this my friend, ought to be the next step of our evolution, and that's why it's no longer merely a matter of natural selection, it's what I hereby dub "sapient selection", that is the process of determining the path of our evolution ourselves.”

EvolutionThoughtsPrejudiceBrainy QuotesSelf DeterminationNeuroscienceEvolutionary PsychologyNatural SelectionInstinctsSapient Selection
Book:Ain't Enough to Look Human
Create image

“Our metaphors for the operation of the brain are frequently drawn from the production line. We think of the brain as a glorified sausage machine, taking in information from the senses, processing it and regurgitating it in a different form, as thoughts or actions. The digital computer reinforces this idea because it is quite explicitly a machine that does to information what a sausage machine does to pork. Indeed, the brain was the original inspiration and metaphor for the development of the digital computer, and early computers were often described as 'giant brains'. Unfortunately, neuroscientists have sometimes turned this analogy on its head, and based their models of brain function on the workings of the digital computer (for example by assuming that memory is separate and distinct from processing, as it is in a computer). This makes the whole metaphor dangerously self-reinforcing.”

BrainMetaphorNeuroscienceCognitionCybernetics
Book:Creation: Life and How to Make It
Create image

“The human brain, for all its sophistication, would be useless without its link to the outside world. Consider one experiment that illustrates this point. Volunteers hallucinated when they were deprived of sensory input by being blindfolded and suspended and warm water in a sensory deprivation tank. One saw charging pink and purple elephants. Another heard a chorus, still others had taste hallucinations. Our very sanity depends on a continuous flow of information from the outside.”

BrainSanityNeuroscienceNervous SystemNeurologySensation
Author:Marieb Elaine N. Hoehn Katja
Create image

“If we are to presuppose that the universe is inherently material, that we are emergent organisms from this universe and by nature we seek and generate meaning, meaning itself becomes a substructure of the universe. To think otherwise is to dissociate ourself from the universe, which contradicts the latter belief”

PhilosophyUniversePsychologyMeaningNeuroscienceAldrich Chan
Book:Reassembling Models of Reality: Theory and Clinical Practice
Create image

“Educated people, of course, know that perception, cognition, language, and emotion are rooted in the brain. But it is still tempting to think of the brain as it was shown in old educational cartoons, as a control panel with gauges and levers operated by a user — the self, the soul, the ghost, the person, the “me.” But cognitive neuroscience is showing that the self, too, is just another network of brain systems. [C]ognitive neuroscientists have not only exorcised the ghost but have shown that the brain does not even have a part that does exactly what the ghost is supposed to do: review all the facts and make a decision for the rest of the brain to carry out. Each of us feels that there is a single “I” in control. But that is an illusion that the brain works hard to produce, like the impression that our visual fields are rich in detail from edge to edge. The brain does have supervisory systems in the prefrontal lobes and anterior cingulate cortex, which can push the buttons of behavior and override habits and urges. But those systems are gadgets with specific quirks and limitations; they are not implementations of the rational free agent traditionally identified with the soul or the self.”

EgoAgencyFree WillNeuroscienceCognitive NeuroscienceSelf Model
Book:The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
Create image

“Beneath the surface of the protective parts of trauma survivors there exists an undamaged essence, a Self that is confident, curious, and calm, a Self that has been sheltered from destruction by the various protectors that have emerged in their efforts to ensure survival. Once those protectors trust that it is safe to separate, the Self will spontaneously emerge, and the parts can be enlisted in the healing process”

PsychologyTraumaNeuroscienceComplex PtsdDissociative DisordersComplex Trauma
Book:The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
Create image

“Our caretakers were our programmers in childhood, but we can be the programmers in adulthood who take control by deliberately using consciousness to rewire our self-driving system in the way we want.”

InspirationalPsychologySelf HelpSelf ImprovementNeuroscienceBehavioral Psychology
Book:The Self-Driving You: Awaken the Driver Within to Rewire Your Brain and Transform Your Life
Create image

“Neuroscience is Poetry (Sonnet 2717) Human brain is the most astonishing transdimensional engineering of Mother Nature, from outside it's just a 3 pound lump of goop, but inside, the very fabric of spacetime bursts into existence - we stretch time when we suffer, we compress time when we're joyful, we expand space in empathy, we collapse distance through memory - we invent gods when we feel helpless, we invent weapons when we're scared, we invent poetry when we're inspired, we invent politics when we want control - in short, the human brain is bigger on the inside than the outside.”

ConsciousnessPsychologyPerceptionNeuroscienceEvolutionary PsychologyPsychiatryCognitionHuman BrainNeurologyNeurobiology
Book:Nazmahal: Palace of Grace
Create image

“At the center of this reaction is a region of the brain called the amygdala, our internal alarm system. When faced with the unknown, the amygdala triggers stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol - heart pounding, senses on edge, stomach uneasy - great for real danger but breeding anxiety when the ‘threat’ is only abstract.”

PsychologyEvolutionAnxietyUncertaintyNeuroscienceCopingPhysiologyFight Or FlightAmygdalaStress Response
Book:The Council of Gods
Create image

“At the center of this reaction is a region of the brain called the amygdala, our internal alarm system. When faced with the unknown, the amygdala triggers stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol—heart pounding, senses on edge, stomach uneasy, mom's spaghetti—great for real danger but breeding anxiety when the ‘threat’ is only abstract.”

PsychologyEvolutionAnxietyUncertaintyNeuroscienceCopingPhysiologyFight Or FlightAmygdalaStress Response
Book:The Council of Gods
Create image

“God Eyes (Sonnet) Perception is not a measure of reality, perception is a measure of distance - from afar the sun is a dot, from farther the milkyway is a dot, from farther still the universe is a dot. Likewise, from afar God is an entity, from up close, God is a state of mind, get closer still, and you are God. Perception is like an oscillator circuit, alter the value of the resistor or capacitor, and you change the oscillation. Likewise, truth changes based on the resistance, ie. ignorance, and capacitance, ie. awareness, of your vantage point.”

PhilosophyTruthConsciousnessPsychologyPerceptionSelf AwarenessAdvaitaNeurosciencePursuit Of KnowledgePerception Of Reality
Book:The God Sonnets: Naskar Art of Theology
Create image

“Neurosonnet 2001 Neurons giveth, neurons taketh away. By neurons we forge self, with neurons we fade away. Within neurons cosmos comes to life, within neurons worlds come to end. Neurons are building blocks of walls, as well as the instrument of bridges. There is not one but two cosmos, one made by nature, another by neurons. We are the makers of observable reality, shaped by hopes and biases of our own. Neurons are the birthplace of God, Neurons produce all ghosts and goblins. Life is a concoction of neurochemistry, Boon and bane are both our own making.”

ConsciousnessPsychologyPerceptionMindfulnessExistentialismNeurosciencePsychiatryHuman BrainNeurologyNeurobiology
Book:Neurosonnets: The Naskar Art of Neuroscience
Create image

“He faced me as he spoke, was oriented towards me, and yet there was something the matter—it was difficult to formulate. He faced me with his ears, I came to think, but not with his eyes. These, instead of looking, gazing, at me, ‘taking me in’, in the normal way, made sudden strange fixations—on my nose, on my right ear, down to my chin, up to my right eye—as if noting (even studying) these individual features, but not seeing my whole face, its changing expressions, ‘me’, as a whole. I am not sure that I fully realized this at the time—there was just a teasing strangeness, some failure in the normal interplay of gaze and expression. He saw me, he scanned me, and yet...”

BrainPsychologyNeuroscienceNeuropsychologyAgnosia
Book:The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales
Create image