Quotes About Cognition

Can the knowledge deriving from reason even begin to compare with knowledge perceptible by sense?

We know that there is a connection between our feelings and our brain.

How do you know, right now, that you are aware of being aware, or conscious?

When brains get sufficiently big, presumably, as human brains have, consciousness seems to emerge.

It's very likely that most mammals have consciousness, and probably birds, too.

Consciousness allows you the capacity to plan.

It is certain that the inanimate objects by which you are surrounded have a direct action on the brain.

While the hippocampus itself doesn't store memories, it serves to triage our experiences based upon their survival significance.

My cognitive skills are a little suspect at times. It comes and goes on certain days. I can be sitting here and you might say what's wrong with him, and I'll figure out what I was saying and start going again.

I suspect that pleasure is mainly used to turn off parts of the brain so you can keep fresh the memories of things you're trying to learn. It protects the short-term memory buffers. That's one theory of pleasure.

One of the things I've come to appreciate about the brain is the importance of location. It's not just a set of interchangeable parts that you can swap in and out.

Series of syllables which have been learned by heart, forgotten, and learned anew must be similar as to their inner conditions at the times when they can be recited.

A sympathetic parent might see the spark of consciousness in a baby's large eyes and eagerly accept the popular claim that babies are wonderful learners, but it is hard to avoid the impression that they begin as ignorant as bread loaves.

Tip-of-the-tongue syndrome is when people almost remember something but need a computer, or someone else, to help them find it. The problem is, our brains have always been terrible at remembering details. They were like that way before the Internet came along.

We do not know where to look, or what to look for, when something is memorized. We do not know what it means, or what change there is in the nervous system, when a fact is learned. This is a very important problem which has not been solved at all.

Trying to forget really doesn't work. In fact, it's pretty much the same as remembering.

People don't want to think about it.' 'I can see why,' I said. 'It makes my head hurt.' 'Still, you did better than most people. You're a pretty smart kid.' I rolled my eyes. 'Gee, thanks.

Reason's a thing we dimly see in sleep.

Memory comprises three basic processes: encoding, storage, and retrieval.

It has been estimated that out of every million parts of information received and processed by our body, we humans only admit thirteen parts into our conscious awareness. That means we only allow ourselves to be conscious of .000013 percent of the data, of experience, known to our body. That

Decision making is a skill.

Simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds.

The thinking of the mind is twofold: understanding and willing.

that we conduct our thoughts along different ways, and do not fix our attention on the same objects.