Quotes About Brain

We are not consciously aware of most of the predictions made by the brain unless an error occurs. Trying to understand how the neurons in the neocortex make predictions led to the second discovery.

the cortex uses the same computational tool to accomplish everything it does.

Our reality is similar to the brain-in-a-vat hypothesis; we live in a simulated world, but it is not in a computer—it is in our head.

Mountcastle proposed that the reason the regions look similar is that they are all doing the same thing. What makes them different is not their intrinsic function but what they are connected to.

Remember, the brain is in a dark quiet box with no knowledge of anything other than the time-flowing patterns on its input fibers.

We have learned a tremendous amount of knowledge and facts about the brain, but we have little understanding of how the whole thing works.

the Thousand Brains Theory: knowledge of any particular item is distributed among thousands of complementary models.

through the sensory nerves. The nerves only send spikes. And since we do not perceive spikes, everything we do perceive must be fabricated in the brain. Even the most basic feelings of light, sound, and touch are creations of the brain; they only exist in its model of the world.

There are neurons in the old part of our brain that are known to learn maps of the places we have visited, and these neurons have been under evolutionary pressure for so long that they are fine-tuned to do what they do. In mammals, the old brain parts where these map-creating neurons exist are called the hippocampus and the entorhinal cortex.

Turing Test: if a computer can fool a human interrogator into thinking that it too is a person, then by definition the computer must be intelligent. And so, with the Turing Test as his measuring stick and the Turing Machine as his medium, Turing helped launch the field of AI. Its central dogma: the brain is just another kind of computer.

irrespective of the lack of biological evidence, that brains were just another kind of computer.

We realized that the brain's model of the world is built using maplike reference frames. Not one reference frame, but hundreds of thousands of them. Indeed, we now understand that most of the cells in your neocortex are dedicated to creating and manipulating reference frames, which the brain uses to plan and think.

Although we can't know the details of the future, the Thousand Brains Theory can help us define the boundaries. Understanding how the brain creates intelligence tells us what things are possible, what things are not, and to some extent what advances are likely.

Since I am not actually a real human being, my emotional responses are generally limited to what I have learned to fake. So I did not feel shock, outrage, anger, or even bitter resolve. They're very difficult emotions to do convincingly, and there was no audience to do them for, so why bother? But I did feel a slow cold wind from the Dark Backseat sweep up my spine and blow dry leaves over the floor of my lizard brain.

It was a brilliant train of pure cool logic; I welcomed the return of my giant brain and mentally patted myself on the head. Good boy, Dexter. Arf arf.

My justly famous brain was the very last asset I had; using it to play back one small cruel song over and over was not really the optimum function of this rare and valuable piece of machinery.

The elevator made a muted ding sound to announce its arrival at last, but I was no longer interested, because I had a thought. Every now and then I do have thoughts. Most of them never make it all the way to the surface, probably because of a lifetime of trying to seem human. But this one came slowly up and, like a gas bubble bursting through mud, popped brightly in my brain. "Saturday morning?" I said. "Do you remember what time?

He does, however, make one small attempt to stay interested. During the Hop-on-Hop-off Bus Tour of Paris, as the taped program drones out the names of the different fascinating locations with massive historical significance in eight languages, a thought comes unasked for into Dexter's slowly suffocating brain.

This was a characteroloical prelude, but it wasn't chemical or somatic. It was the anatomy of melancholy, not the anatomy of his brain.

free will is making a comeback. Biology gives you a brain. Life turns it into a mind.

And so a strange new possibility is arising. Compromised, indefinite, sketchy, but not entirely obliterated: free will is making a comeback. Biology gives you a brain. Life turns it into a mind.

Corpul ii era ca o tulpina, sustinand laleaua creierului sau.

All I know is this: despite my androgenized brain, there's an innate feminine circularity in the story I have to tell. In any genetic history. I'm the final clause in a periodic sentence, and that sentence begins a long time ago, in another language, and you have to read it from the beginning to get to the end, which is my arrival.

Though he'd never been religious, he realized now that he'd always believed in the soul, in a force of personality that survived death. But as his mind continued to waver, to short-circuit, he finally arrived at the cold-eyed conclusion, so at odds with his youthful cheerfulness, that the brain was just an organ like any other and that when it failed he would be no more.