Quotes About Neurons

When you read a book, the neurons in your brain fire overtime, deciding what the characters are wearing, how they're standing, and what it feels like the first time they kiss. No one shows you. The words make suggestions. Your brain paints the pictures.

We know a certain amount about neurons. You can do fMRI and watch parts of the brain light up. But what happens in the middle is poorly understood.

In short, the brain has the power to recruit healthy neurons to perform the function of the damaged ones. Neuroplasticity enables the brain to reassign jobs.

It turned out that our choices of everything from food to mates result not from some mysterious free will, but rather from billions of neurons calculating probabilities within a split second. Vaunted 'human intuition' is in reality 'pattern recognition'.3

the mind with the brain, but they are really very different things. The brain is a material network of neurons, synapses, and biochemicals. The mind is a flow of subjective experiences, such as pain, pleasure, anger, and love. Biologists assume that the brain somehow produces

It turns out that our choices of everything from food to mates result not from some mysterious free will but rather from billions of neurons calculating probabilities within a split second. Vaunted "human intuition" is in reality "pattern recognition.

The humanities, in contrast, emphasise the crucial importance of intersubjective entities, which cannot be reduced to hormones and neurons.

Some believe that if we could only crack the genetic code and map every neuron in the brain, we will know all of humanity's secrets. After all, if humans have no soul, and if thoughts, emotions and sensations are just biochemical algorithms, why can't biology account for all the vagaries of human societies?

It turns out that our choices of everything from food to mates result not from some mysterious free will but rather from billions of neurons calculating probabilities within a split second.

Si le cerveau des mammifères a évolué selon une certaine voie, celui des oiseaux en a suivi une autre . Progression dynamique plutôt que stagnation reptilienne. Au lieu de se déployer à la surface en gros plis grumeleux comme chez les mammifères, leur intelligence est enfouie dans le cortex. Comment voler avec une grosse tête ? Leur cerveau est compact, renferme plus de neurones dans un petit espace que tout autre animal.

Tu cerebro contiene alrededor de cien mil millones de células nerviosas que establecen un billón, o quizá incluso un trillón, de conexiones llamadas sinapsis. Estas conexiones están en un constante estado de remodelación dinámica en respuesta al mundo que te rodea. Son una minúscula, pero estupenda, maravilla de la naturaleza.

Hay un antiguo dicho de la facultad de medicina: las personas utilizan tan solo alrededor de un 10 por ciento de su cerebro. Literalmente, no es cierto. En un adulto sano, las redes neuronales operan al máximo de su capacidad todo el tiempo.

most expensive in the body, second only to the heart. Neurons may be small, but they're costly to make and maintain, consuming about ten times more energy relative to their size than other cells.

Remarkably, the fetal brain generates far more neurons than are found in the adult. Why? During late fetal development, there is a dramatic competition in much of the brain, with winning neurons being the ones that migrate to the correct location and maximize synaptic connections to other neurons. And neurons that don't make the grade? They undergo "programmed cell death"—genes are activated that cause them to shrivel and die, their materials then recycled.

Remarkably, the size of neurons' dendritic trees in the hippocampus expands and contracts like an accordion throughout a female rat's ovulatory cycle, with the size (and her cognitive skills) peaking when estrogen peaks.fn6 Thus, neurons can form new dendritic branches and spines, increasing the size of their dendritic tree or, in other circumstances, do the opposite; hormones frequently mediate these effects.

The sensory cortex and visual cortex are far away from each other. How do those tactile neurons "know" (a) that there's vacant property in the visual cortex; (b) that hooking up with those unoccupied neurons helps turn fingertip information into "reading"; and (c) how to send axonal projections to this new cortical continent? All are matters of ongoing research.

THE DELAYED MATURATION of the frontal cortex suggests an obvious scenario, namely that early in adolescence the frontal cortex has fewer neurons, dendritic branches, and synapses than in adulthood, and that levels increase into the midtwenties. Instead, levels decrease.

the fetal brain generates far more neurons than are found in the adult.

Stick recording electrodes into numerous species' amygdalaefn9 and see when neurons there have action potentials; this turns out to be when the animal is being aggressive.fn10 In a related approach, determine which brain regions consume extra oxygen or glucose, or synthesize certain activity-related proteins, during aggression—the amygdala tops the list.

testosterone increases the excitability of amygdaloid neurons, and glucocorticoids decrease excitability of prefrontal cortical neurons.

LeDoux and others have shown how auditory information about the tone stimulates BLA neurons. At first, activation of those neurons is irrelevant to the central amygdala (whose neurons are destined to activate following the shock). But with repeated coupling of tone with shock, there is remapping and those BLA neurons acquire the means to activate the central amygdala.fn16

Thus, shorter refractory periods mean a higher rate of action potentials. So is testosterone causing action potentials in these neurons? No. It's causing them to fire at a faster rate if they are stimulated by something else. Similarly, testosterone increases amygdala response to angry faces, but not to other sorts.

Reality is a construct of the neurons.

?The universe perceives itself through us, or to be more specific, through our neurons.