Quotes About Cognition

When we have any function, whether it's language or vision or cognitive functions like memory, we aren't dealing with a straight line to the brain that says 'This is what I do.' The brain builds a network of connections, a network of neurons that have a particular role in that function.

They have understood of others' lives what they were capable of understanding. But even if it were like that, it would be otherwise.

of the diverse systems within our brains. Optimal sculpting of the prefrontal cortex through healthy early relationships allows us to think well of ourselves, trust others, regulate our emotions, maintain positive expectations, and utilize our intellectual and emotional intelligence in moment-to-moment problem solving. We can now add a corollary to Darwin's survival of the fittest: Those who are nurtured best survive best.

No belief, James thought, is justified by its correspondence with reality, because mirroring reality is not the purpose of having minds.

To live, a man needs food, water, and a sharp mind.

Your mind is everything. It's like a muscle. You must exercise it or it will atrophy—just like a muscle.

Nadie piensa en tu mente sino tú.

Thinking is an action,

Control your thoughts and you can control your emotions. Do you trust me?

She consulted the yellowing Rolodex in her head.

There's no tyrant like a brain.

In my heart I know the truth, but my mind cannot accept the reality of what this all means.

Contact with reality is not an all-or-nothing condition.

T]o think God is therefore to affirm what God is, to establish the being of God as an act. That God is thought, cognised, is essential; that this tree is thought, is to the tree accidental, unessential. … [H]ow is it possible that God – if he is to exist for us, to be an object to us – must necessarily be thought … ? … [I]t is not possible.

A word is an abstract image, the imaginary thing, or, in so far as everything is ultimately an object of the thinking power, it is the imagined thought: hence men, when they know the word, the name for a thing, fancy that they know the thing also.

The limits of my language means the limits of my world.

When we can't think for ourselves, we can always quote

We believe what we want to, what we need to. The corollary is that we choose not to see what we'd rather pretend doesn't exist.

In brain scans, music lights up the medial prefrontal cortex and triggers a memory that starts playing in your mind. All of a sudden you can see a place, a person, an incident. The strongest responses to music—the ones that elicit vivid memories—cause the greatest activity on brain scans.

If you take away anything from this novel, I hope it is an awareness of the cognitive and emotional intelligence of these beautiful animals—and the understanding that it is up to all of us to protect them.

The brain isn't very much like a computer, although it doesn't do a bad job, considering that it's built by unskilled labor and programmed more by pure chance than anything else.

One can only see what one observes, and one observes only things which are already in the mind." Trust

when someone looks in a certain direction as they process a question or as they answer it, is that they are thinking—it is not per se indicative of deception.

partner, Dr. Watson, "You see, but you do not observe.