Latest David Eagleman Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• The main thing known about secrets is that keeping them is unhealthy for the brain.

  David Eagleman

  Secret, Brain, Unhealthy

  David Eagleman (2011). “Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain”, p.153, Vintage

• If you measure someone's brain and see very little activity during a task, it does not necessarily indicate that they're not trying - it more likely signifies that they have worked hard in the past to burn the programs into the circuitry. Consciousness is called in during the first phase of learning and is excluded from the game playing after it is deep in the system.

  David Eagleman

  Past, Games, Brain

  David Eagleman (2011). “Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain”, p.151, Vintage

• Imbalance of reason and emotion may explain the tenacity of religion in societies: world religions are optimized to tap into the emotional networks, and great arguments of reason amount to little against such magnetic pull.

  David Eagleman

  Emotional, Reason And Emotion, World Religions

  David Eagleman (2011). “Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain”, p.128, Vintage

• If you cannot always elicit a straight answer from the unconscious brain, how can you access its knowledge? Sometimes the trick is merely to probe what your gut is telling you. So the next time a friend laments that she cannot decide between two options, tell her the easiest way to solve her problem: flip a coin. She should specify which option belongs to heads and which to tails, and then let the coin fly. The important part is to assess her gut feeling after the coin lands. If she feels a subtle sense of relief at being "told" what to do by the coin, that's the right choice for her.

  David Eagleman

  Land, Two, Choices

  Source: www.goodreads.com

• When a male vole repeatedly mates with a female, a hormone called vasopressin is released in his brain. The vasopressin binds to receptors in a part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens, and the binding mediates a pleasurable feeling that becomes associated with that female. This locks in the monogamy, which is known as pair-bonding. If you block this hormone, the pair-bonding goes away.

  David Eagleman

  Block, Feelings, Brain

  Source: www.goodreads.com

• If you are a carrier of a particular set of genes, your probability of committing a violent crime goes up by eight hundred and eighty-two percent.

  David Eagleman

  Two, Eight, Crime

  David Eagleman (2011). “Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain”, p.167, Vintage

• The drives you take for granted ("I'm a hetero/homosexual," "I'm attracted to children/adults," "I'm aggressive/not aggressive," and so on) depend on the intricate details of your neural machinery.

  David Eagleman

  Children, Details, Adults

  David Eagleman (2011). “Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain”, p.163, Vintage

• Odor carries a great deal of information, including information about a potential mate's age, sex, fertility, identity, emotions, and health.

  David Eagleman

  Sex, Age, Identity

  David Eagleman (2011). “Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain”, p.105, Vintage

• None of the individual metal hunks of an airplane have the property of flight, but when they are attached together in the right way, the result takes to the air. A thin metal bar won't do you much good if you're trying to control a jaguar, but several of them in parallel have the property of containment. The concept of emergent properties means that something new can be introduced that is not inherent in any of the parts.

  David Eagleman

  Airplane, Mean, Trying

• This is what consciousness does: it sets the goals, and the rest of the system learns how to meet them.

  David Eagleman

  Goal, Doe, Consciousness

  David Eagleman (2011). “Incognito: The Secret Lives of The Brain”, p.61, Canongate Books

• Reductionism is not the right viewpoint for everything, and it certainly won't explain the relationship between the brain and the mind. This is because of a feature known as emergence. When you put together large numbers of pieces and parts, the whole can become something greater than the sum.

  David Eagleman

  Numbers, Brain, Mind

  David Eagleman (2011). “Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain”, p.226, Vintage

• Given the billions of neurons, this means there are as many connections in a single cubic centimeter of brain tissue as there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

  David Eagleman

  Stars, Mean, Brain

  David Eagleman (2011). “Incognito: The Secret Lives of The Brain”, p.6, Canongate Books

• The brain internally simulates what will happen if you were to perform some action under specific conditions. Internal models not only play a role in motor acts (such as catching or dodging) but also underlie conscious perception.

  David Eagleman

  Play, Perception, Brain

  David Eagleman (2011). “Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain”, p.59, Vintage

• Visual cortex is fundamentally a machine whose job is to generate a model of the world.

  David Eagleman

  Jobs, Machines, World

  David Eagleman (2011). “Incognito: The Secret Lives of The Brain”, p.45, Canongate Books

• Just give the brain the information and it will figure it out.

  David Eagleman

  Giving, Brain, Information

  David Eagleman (2011). “Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain”, p.54, Vintage

• We are not at the center of ourselves, but instead - like the Earth in the Milky Way, and the Milky Way in the universe - far out on a distant edge, hearing little of what is transpiring.

  David Eagleman

  Littles, Way, Hearing

  David Eagleman (2011). “Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain”, p.23, Vintage

• At least 15 percent of human females possess a genetic mutation that gives them an extra (fourth) type of color photoreceptor - and this allows them to discriminate between colors that look identical to the majority of us with a mere three types of color photoreceptors.

  David Eagleman

  Color, Giving, Female

  David Eagleman (2011). “Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain”, p.54, Vintage

• Even though the outside world has not changed, your brain dynamically presents different interpretations.

  David Eagleman

  Brain, World, Different

• The brain "fills in" the missing information from the blind spot. Notice what you see in the location of the dot when it's in your blind spot. When the dot disappears, you do not perceive a hole of whiteness or blackness in its place; instead your brain invents a patch of the background pattern. Your brain, with no information from that particular spot in visual space, fills in with the patterns around it. You're not perceiving what's out there. You're perceiving whatever your brain tells you.

  David Eagleman

  Blind Spots, Space, Missing

• All activity in the brain is driven by other activity in the brain, in a vastly complex, interconnected network.

  David Eagleman

  Brain, Driven, Activity

  David Eagleman (2011). “Incognito: The Secret Lives of The Brain”, p.134, Canongate Books

• Think about the brain as the densest concentration of youness. It's the peak of the mountain, but not the whole mountain.

  David Eagleman

  Thinking, Brain, Mountain

  David Eagleman (2011). “Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain”, p.228, Vintage

• In the traditionally taught view of perception, data from the sensorium pours into the brain, works its way up the sensory hierarchy, and makes itself seen, heard, smelled, tasted, felt - "perceived." But a closer examination of the data suggests this is incorrect. The brain is properly thought of as a mostly closed system that runs on its own internally generated activity.

  David Eagleman

  Running, Views, Data

  David Eagleman (2011). “Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain”, p.55, Vintage

• Many people prefer a view of human nature that includes a true side and a false side - in other words, humans have a single genuine aim and the rest is decoration, evasion, or cover-up. That's intuitive, but it's incomplete. A study of the brain necessitates a more nuanced view of human nature.

  David Eagleman

  Views, People, Brain

  David Eagleman (2011). “Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain”, p.114, Vintage

• We spend our lives on a thin slice between the unimaginably small scales of the atoms that compose us and the infinitely large scales of galaxies.

  David Eagleman

  Atoms, Scales, Galaxy

  David Eagleman (2011). “Incognito: The Secret Lives of The Brain”, p.66, Canongate Books

• If choices and decisions derive from hidden mental processes, then free choice is either an illusion or, at minimum, more tightly constrained than previously considered.

  David Eagleman

  Decision, Choices, Illusion

  David Eagleman (2011). “Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain”, p.23, Vintage