Quotes About Neuroscience

Scientists are beginning to pinpoint the brain regions that become active when one feels fusion with a "higher power," such as God.36 Perhaps this brain region is also involved in love.

When we smile at someone, we leave a tiny imprint on that person's brain. Somewhere, deep within their motor cortex, their brain is smiling back.

Testosterone has another important effect: It increases levels of dopamine, the feel-good chemical in the brain that mediates the reward network. Pay raises, compliments, sex, experiencing any kind of success—all result in increased levels of dopamine in the brain.

But it is our perception of success that has the biggest hit on this part of our brain. When dopamine levels are high, they engage our frontal cortex, where are our "executive function" exists.

le cerveau ne détermine pas la pensée ; et par conséquent la pensée, en grande partie du moins, est indépendante du cerveau.

La neurociencia nos dice que es altamente improbable que tengamos alma, pues cuanto pensamos y sentimos no es ni más ni menos que el parloteo electroquímico de nuestras neuronas. Nuestro sentido de la identidad, nuestros sentimientos y pensamientos, el amor que mostramos a los demás, nuestras esperanzas y ambiciones, nuestros odios y temores, todo eso muere cuando el cerebro muere.

My 'I', my conscious self, writing these words, does not feel like electrochemistry, but that is what it is.

People have a basic desire to feel good about themselves, and we therefore have a tendency to be unconsciously biased in favor of traits similiar to our won, even such seemingly meaningless traits as our names. Scientists have even identified a discrete area of the brain, called the dorsal striatum, as the structure that mediates much of this bias.

It took less than three generations of children online to wipe out the part of the brain that's hard-wired for awe.

There's an old rule in neuroscience that does not alter with age: use it or lose it. It is a very hopeful principle when applied to critical thought in the reading brain because it implies choice.

There are things that neuroscience is useful for in terms of understanding behavior, but there are also things it is not all that useful for, like understanding the nuances of our reactions to poetry.

A new laboratory technique, positron emission tomography, uses radioactively labeled oxygen or glucose that essentially lights up specific and different areas of the brain being activated when a person speaks words or sees words or hears words, revealing the organic location for areas of behavioral malfunction.

There are still many challenges and questions that need to be addressed before optogenetics can be applied in humans for therapeutic uses.

My system uses the speed of components in cameras and cell phones to get four inches of depth through the brain.

Abnormalities in brain function have traditionally been detected using electroencephalography (EEG), which involves the measurement of the ongoing electrical activity generated by the brain.

We believe that people will use real-time fMRI feedback to hone cognitive strategies that will increase activation of brain regions.

When people hear that I'm a neuroscientist, they ask me tough questions. 'Will grandpa learn to walk again after his stroke?' 'How can my son overcome his dyslexia?' 'What could have caused my best friend to become schizophrenic?' When I can't give satisfying answers, they look disappointed - and I feel embarrassed.

Much of what we now consider 'personality' will be explained away as structural and chemical functions of the brain.

When looking at the brain, it is important to go beyond its structure to its function. This is because often in cognitive disorders, the structure of the brain is intact, but its function is compromised.

The mind of the polyglot is a very particular thing, and scientists are only beginning to look closely at how acquiring a second language influences learning, behavior and the very structure of the brain itself.

As a programmer, you're working with very simple structures compared to the brain. So I was always fascinated by how the brain works.

In any complex organism, brain formation and function must be controlled in part by genes.

Independent of what is happening around you in the outside world, humans constantly have internal activity in the brain.

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.