Edward Boyden Quotes

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• Suppose there are some things that we don't understand about the universe, but if you understand human intelligence and you understand the gaps in our abilities to think about things, maybe we can engineer in a computer more advanced intelligences that can help augment our ability to think.

  Edward Boyden

  Thinking, Gaps, Helping

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• The world is your playground - play with a sense of destiny.

  Edward Boyden

  Motivational, Destiny, Play

  11 Copy quote

• If you give somebody a lot of questions to answer and then they walk by a bowl of candy, they are more likely to grab the candy because they're tired out from answering questions and can't resist.

  Edward Boyden

  Tired, Giving, Answers

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

  7 Copy quote

• If our brain is understanding some parts of the universe and not understanding other parts, and those understandings are about the laws of physics that our brains are built on top of, then it's kind of a loop, right?

  Edward Boyden

  Law, Understanding, Brain

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• When I'm talking to somebody, I'll put a piece of paper on the table and I'll write what I call a conversation summary - notes about the conversation on the piece of paper. At the end of the conversation, I'll take a picture on my phone and give the other person the original piece of paper.

  Edward Boyden

  Writing, Phones, Talking

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• I would argue that if you understand how the cells of the brain are organized into circuits, almost computational circuits if you will, and we see how information flows through those circuits and how it's transformed, we might have a much firmer grasp on why our brains make decisions the way that they do. If we get a handle on that, maybe we can overcome some of our limitations and at the very least we'll understand why we do what we do.

  Edward Boyden

  Cells, Information Flow, Decision

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• These disorders - schizophrenia, Alzheimer's, depression, addiction - they not only steal our time to live, they change who we are.

  Edward Boyden

  Motivation, Inspiration, Alzheimer's

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• It's surprising that the world is understandable to the extent that it is.

  Edward Boyden

  World, Surprising

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

  6 Copy quote

• Work backward from your goal.

  Edward Boyden

  Goal

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• One thing that I've been doing for a long time is to wake up really early. I try to get up around 4 or 5 in the morning, long before most of my lab members are up, which gives me some quiet time to really think without distraction. I think that's important.

  Edward Boyden

  Morning, Thinking, Long

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

  4 Copy quote

• I often try to think about, What sounds like a bad idea, but if you find the right plan of attack, it's actually a really good idea? I spend a lot of time really trying to systematically tackle problems from different angles.

  Edward Boyden

  Thinking, Ideas, Trying

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• A big part of my job is to remember failure, and reboot failure, when the timing is right.

  Edward Boyden

  Jobs, Timing, Remember

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• Many of the projects that we do that appear quite successful, it's actually often the second or third time we've given it a try.

  Edward Boyden

  Successful, Trying, Projects

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• Maybe we'll understand more about how the universe came to be, and what forces drove it in the early days and which forces drive it now.

  Edward Boyden

  Force, Universe

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

  4 Copy quote

• Synthesize new ideas constantly. Never read passively. Annotate, model, think, and synthesize while you read, even when you're reading what you conceive to be introductory stuff. That way, you will always aim towards understanding things at a resolution fine enough for you to be creative.

  Edward Boyden

  Reading, Thinking, Ideas

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

  7 Copy quote

• Unlike optogenetics, where there are existing nonprofits that give away the DNA for free or at cost, expansion microscopy requires chemicals to be used, so having a company that makes the chemistry kit that anybody can use can save time.

  Edward Boyden

  Dna, Giving, Nonprofits

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

  4 Copy quote

• It's not even known how many kinds of cells there are in the brain. If you were looking for a periodic table of the brain, there is no such thing. I really like to think of the brain as a computer.

  Edward Boyden

  Thinking, Cells, Brain

  "Ed Boyden: The brain is like a computer, and we can fix it with nanorobots". Interview with Ian Tucker, www.theguardian.com. March 10, 2012.

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• I spend a lot of time going over old conversation summaries. A lot of the old ones are about ideas that ended in failure, the project didn't work. But hey, you know what? That was five years ago, and now computers are faster, or some new information has come along, the world is different. So we're able to reboot the project.

  Edward Boyden

  Ideas, Years, Information

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

  4 Copy quote

• The brain is really hard to see. The whole thing is very large - the human brain is several pounds in weight - but the connections between brain cells, known as synapses, are really tiny. They're nanoscale in dimension. So if you want to see how the cells of the brain are connected in networks, you have to see those connections, those synapses.

  Edward Boyden

  Cells, Brain, Want

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

  4 Copy quote

• One of the things that got me transitioning from physical science to brain science was asking, Why do we understand so much about the universe?

  Edward Boyden

  Asking Why, Brain, Physical Science

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• If you could map out a human brain, an open question is, if you simulated it, would it be you? Now, as we discussed earlier, we don't have a great definition or even a good technological handle to know whether something is conscious or not just by looking at it, so there's that aspect that we're not ready to answer, I would argue. But it raises very interesting questions about the nature of identity.

  Edward Boyden

  Interesting, Brain, Identity

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• Remember, when we're conscious of something, that state is quite often generated by unconscious processes that happen right before it.

  Edward Boyden

  Remember, Conscious, States

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• If we succeed, it makes no sense to keep it only for ourselves.

  Edward Boyden

  Succeed, Ifs

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• Life is an adventure - Savor every instant!

  Edward Boyden

  Motivational, Adventure, Life Is

  4 Copy quote

• You can imagine over very long timescales, perhaps far beyond the multi-decade time scale, we might be able to ask very deep questions about why we feel the way we feel about things, or why we think of ourselves in certain ways - questions that have been in the realm of psychology and philosophy but have been very difficult to get a firm mechanistic laws-of-physics grasp on.

  Edward Boyden

  Philosophy, Thinking, Law

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

  4 Copy quote

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