Phantoms In The Brain Quotes

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He had the arrogance of the believer, but none of the humility of the deeply religious. ~ V.S. Ramachandran
Phantoms In The Brain quotes by V.S. Ramachandran
The hippocampus is the structure where memory is supposedly controlled. It is the most plastic part of the brain; it is also the part that is assumed to absorb all the damage from repeated insults like the chronic stress we experience daily from small doses of negative feelings - as opposed to the invigorating "good stress" of the tiger popping up occasionally in your living room. You can rationalize all you want; the hippocampus takes the insult of chronic stress seriously, incurring irreversible atrophy. Contrary to popular belief, these small, seemingly harmless stressors do not strengthen you; they can amputate part of your self. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Phantoms In The Brain quotes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Reality took forever - the underwater way people walked and sent their voices wobbling through the air, how printed words lay inert like bugsplat, all manifesting the basic DUH of the physical plane. By the time he decided to go anywhere he wondered why he wasn't there already. As soon as he sent an email he felt he should already have the reply. And learning any fact, he was annoyed not to have known it already, because whenever anything happened, the conversation around it had already trended and backlashed and been reexamined and swallowed and shat and reswallowed and reshat in a thousand places online, until all thinking felt redundant. We needed brain-to-brain; only then would we catch up to real time. Right now everything progressed so slowly that by the time we arrived at the future it was the present again. ~ Tony Tulathimutte
Phantoms In The Brain quotes by Tony Tulathimutte
Rabbi Heskel Shpilman is a deformed mountain, a giant ruined desert, a cartoon house with the windows shut and the sink left running. A little kid lumped him together, a mob of kids, blind orphans who never laid eyes on a man. They clumped the dough of his arms and legs to the dough of his body, then jammed his head down on top. A millionaire could cover a Rolls-Royce with the fine black silk-and-velvet expanse of the rebbe's frock coat and trousers. It would require the brain strength of the eighteen greatest sages in history to reason through the arguments against and in favor of classifying the rebbe's massive bottom as either a creature of the deep, a man-made structure, or an unavoidable act of God. ~ Michael Chabon
Phantoms In The Brain quotes by Michael Chabon
Could I speak to you for a moment, madam?' said Nannie to Agnes.

It was at moments of crisis like this that Mary chiefly envied her Aunt Agnes's imperturbable disposition. Most mothers feel a hideous sinking at the heart when these fatal words are pronounced, but Agnes only showed a kindly and inactive interest.

In anyone else Mary might have suspected unusual powers of bluff, hiding trembling knees, a feeling of helpless nausea, flashes of light behind the eyes, storm in the brain, and a general desire to say 'Take double your present wages, but don't tell me what it is you want to speak to me about.'

But Agnes, placidly confident in the perfection of her own family and the unassailable security of her own existence, was only capable of feeling a mild curiosity and barely capable of showing it. ~ Angela Thirkell
Phantoms In The Brain quotes by Angela Thirkell
Who knows? Life may just be a Positive Conspiracy bent on putting us in the right place at the right time every living, breathing moment of the day. It just takes a certain kind of perspective to see this. Realizing this can put our "analyzer" on hold, our interpretive mind on "ga-ga" and our hearts on breathless. ~ Antero Alli
Phantoms In The Brain quotes by Antero Alli
You know why I've always liked your mouth, Rhubarb?" he asked in that whispery voice again, but it was twice as intimate as before. He let go of his prizes and reached up his free hand to rub his thumb over the bottom edge of her lip. Those shivers started again. "Even when you're calling me names, it's the perfect shape for kissing."
"There's no shape for kissing." She wasn't quite sure how the words came out. Her brain was completely disconnected and so her mouth had to be on auto-pilot. Which explained why it didn't do anything when his eyes closed and his lips descended to hers. ~ Dee Tenorio
Phantoms In The Brain quotes by Dee Tenorio
As we begin the 21st century, the Hubble space telescope is providing us with information about as yet uncharted regions of the universe and the promise that we may learn something about the origin of the cosmos. This same spirit of adventure is also being directed to the most complex structure that exists in the universe - the human brain. ~ Floyd E. Bloom
Phantoms In The Brain quotes by Floyd E. Bloom
Then, as she twisted to the right, she revealed her talking partner. I literally broke step, my body deciding before my brain that my presence would not be needed in their interaction. Carol was gorgeous. A tall, confident, amazon of a woman. The lines of her gold lamay dress skimming every curve of her body. She was clearly not wearing underwear. She looked like a glossy magazine perfume ad. And this man was her magazine equal. He was perfect. Tall. Substantial. He looked muscular without giving the impression that he worked out. Maybe he was a rower. Or it could be tennis. Maybe he chopped down trees. Yes, he'd be very good at chopping trees down. I remember feeling an unnaturally strong desire to watch him do that. ~ Catherine Steadman
Phantoms In The Brain quotes by Catherine Steadman
When you hit a groove, it's not you; it's the spirit world. The spirits whisper the ideas in your brain and prod you along. They're the ones that are really happy. ~ Tommy Chong
Phantoms In The Brain quotes by Tommy Chong
Even without world wars, revolutions and emigration, siblings growing up in the same home almost never share the same environment. More accurately, brothers and sisters share some environments - usually the less important ones - but they rarely share the one single environment that has the most powerful impact on personality formation. They may live in the same house, eat the same kinds of food, partake in many of the same activities. These are environments of secondary importance. Of all environments, the one that most profoundly shapes the human personality is the invisible one: the emotional atmosphere in which the child lives during the critical early years of brain development.

The invisible environment has little to do with parenting philosophies or parenting style. It is a matter of intangibles, foremost among them being the parents' relationship with each other and their emotional balance as individuals. These, too, can vary significantly from the birth of one child to the arrival of another. Psychological tension in the parents' lives during the child's infancy is, I am convinced, a major and universal influence on the subsequent emergence of ADD.

A hidden factor of great importance is a parent's unconscious attitude toward a child: what, or whom, on the deepest level, the child represents for the parents; the degree to which the parents see themselves in the child; the needs parents may have that they subliminally hope the child will meet. ~ Gabor Mate
Phantoms In The Brain quotes by Gabor Mate
For example, at a recent conference on psychoneuroimmunology - a new science that studies the way the mind (psycho), the nervous system (neuro), and the immune system (immunology) interact - Candace Pert, chief of brain biochemistry at the National Institute of Mental Health, announced that immune cells have neuropeptide receptors. Neuropeptides are molecules the brain uses to communicate, the brain's telegrams, if you will. There was a time when it was believed that neuropeptides could only be found in the brain. But the existence of receptors (telegram receivers) on the cells in our immune system implies that the immune system is not separate from but is an extension of the brain. Neuropeptides have also been found in various other parts of the body, leading Pert to admit that she can no longer tell where the brain leaves off and the body begins. ~ Michael Talbot
Phantoms In The Brain quotes by Michael Talbot
Even after a peak parenting experience, children never transition to a fully self-tuning physiology. Adults remain social animals: they continue to require a source of stabilization outside themselves. That open-loop design means that in some important ways, people cannot be stable on their own - not should or shouldn't be, but can't be. This prospect is disconcerting to many, especially in a society that prizes individuality as ours does. Total self-sufficiency turns out to be a daydream whose bubble is burst by the sharp edge of the limbic brain. Stability means finding people who regulate you well and staying near them. (86) ~ Thomas Lewis
Phantoms In The Brain quotes by Thomas Lewis
The core of the consulting business is going in and essentially making yourself indispensible by eating the brain of the organization, meaning that the consultants go in and assume key functions in the organization. ~ Matthew Stewart
Phantoms In The Brain quotes by Matthew Stewart
That's what I love about writing. Once you get the words down on paper, in print, they start to make sense. It's like you don't know what you think until it dribbles from your brain down your arm and into your hand and out through your fingers and shows up on the computer screen, and you read it and realize: That's really true; I believe that. ~ Ellen Wittlinger
Phantoms In The Brain quotes by Ellen Wittlinger
Vogon poetry is of course, the third worst in the universe.
The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their poet master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem "Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning" four of his audience died of internal haemorrhaging and the president of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos was reported to have been "disappointed" by the poem's reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his 12-book epic entitled "My Favourite Bathtime Gurgles" when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save humanity, leapt straight up through his neck and throttled his brain.
The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator, Paul Neil Milne Johnstone of Redbridge, in the destruction of the planet Earth. Vogon poetry is mild by comparison. ~ Douglas Adams
Phantoms In The Brain quotes by Douglas Adams
The Government set the stage economically by informing everyone that we were in a depression period, with very pointed allusions to the 1930s. The period just prior to our last 'good' war. ... Boiled down, our objective was to make killing and military life seem like adventurous fun, so for our inspiration we went back to the Thirties as well. It was pure serendipity. Inside one of the Scripter offices there was an old copy of Doc Smith's first LENSMAN space opera. It turned out that audiences in the 1970s were more receptive to the sort of things they scoffed at as juvenilia in the 1930s. Our drugs conditioned them to repeat viewings, simultaneously serving the ends of profit and positive reinforcement. The movie we came up with stroked all the correct psychological triggers. The fact that it grossed more money than any film in history at the time proved how on target our approach was.'

'Oh my God... said Jonathan, his mouth stalling the open position.

'Six months afterward we ripped ourselves off and got secondary reinforcement onto television. We pulled a 40 share. The year after that we phased in the video games, experimenting with non-narcotic hypnosis, using electrical pulses, body capacitance, and keying the pleasure centers of the brain with low voltage shocks. Jesus, Jonathan, can you *see* what we've accomplished? In something under half a decade we've programmed an entire generation of warm bodies to go to war for us and love it. They buy what ~ David J. Schow
Phantoms In The Brain quotes by David J. Schow
Gradually the events of the preceding night crept with silent, blood-stained feet into his brain and reconstructed themselves there with terrible distinctness. He winced at the memory of all that he had suffered, and for a moment the same curious feeling of loathing for Basil Hallward that had made him kill him as he sat in the chair came back to him, and he grew cold with passion. The dead man was still sitting there, too, and in the sunlight now. How horrible that was! Such hideous things were for the darkness, not for the day. ~ Oscar Wilde
Phantoms In The Brain quotes by Oscar Wilde
This kind of pragmatism has become a hallmark of our psychological culture. In the mid-1990s, I described how it was commonplace for people to "cycle through" different ideas of the human mind as (to name only a few images) mechanism, spirit, chemistry, and vessel for the soul.14 These days, the cycling through intensifies. We are in much more direct contact with the machine side of mind. People are fitted with a computer chip to help with Parkinson's. They learn to see their minds as program and hardware. They take antidepressants prescribed by their psychotherapists, confident that the biochemical and oedipal self can be treated in one room. They look for signs of emotion in a brain scan. Old jokes about couples needing "chemistry" turn out not to be jokes at all. ~ Sherry Turkle
Phantoms In The Brain quotes by Sherry Turkle
Peeping through my keyhold I see within the range of only about 30 percent of the light that comes from the sun; the rest is infrared and some little ultraviolet, perfectly apparent to many animals, but invisible to me. A nightmare network of ganglia, charged and firing without my knowledge, cuts and splices what I see, editing it for my brain. Donald E. Carr points out that the sense impressions of one-celled animals are not edited for the brian: 'This is philosophically interesting in a rather mournful way, since it means that only the simplest animals perceive the universe as it is. ~ Annie Dillard
Phantoms In The Brain quotes by Annie Dillard
The books said that the problem with autism was in the brain, and that made me feel like a faulty computer, something that should be sent back or scrapped. All the interventions, all the training, were like software designed to make a bad computer work right. It never does, and neither did I. ~ Elizabeth Moon
Phantoms In The Brain quotes by Elizabeth Moon
That night Koch... tacked Chalmers down at a cocktail party for the conferencees and chastised him for his speech. It is precisely because philisophical approaches to consciousness have all failed that scientists must focue on the brain, Koch declared in his rapid-fire German-accented voice, his rubberneckers gathered. Chalmers's information-based theory of consciousness, Koch continued, liek all philosophical ideas, was untestable and therefore useless. "Why don't you just say that when you have a brain the Holy Ghost comes down and makes you conscious!" Koch exlaimed. Such a theory was unnecissarily complicated, Chalmers responded drily, and it would not accord with his own subjective experience. "But how do I know that your subjective experience is the same as mine?" Koch sputtered. "How do I even know you're conscious? ~ John Horgan
Phantoms In The Brain quotes by John Horgan
Hot." The last word, barely a whisper, lost itself in my hair as he pressed his lips to that spot just below my ear that can, apparently, flip the off switch in my brain. Before I realized it my hands were inside that jacket, stroking the hard planes of his chest and stomach. And then, as if moving without any prompting from me they reached down, undid his belt, pulled it loose, and…"Ahhh, that feels great," I moaned."I am completely grossed out over here!" Cassandra informed us.Vayl, who'd been peering down at me with an expression of utter disbelief, stared at Cassandra over the top of my head. "It is not what you think," he assured her."As if I'd do something that disgusting," I said, pulling away from him, but keeping the belt, because the buckle relieved the itching so much better than fingernails. I continued using it to scratch the inflamed skin across my stomach as I sat down by Cassandra.
"You are pathetic," she told me.
"I'd get all offended, but I'm pretty sure you're right. ~ Jennifer Rardin
Phantoms In The Brain quotes by Jennifer Rardin
All that was left was the recollection of having had a good idea, a recurrent experience of having had a good, an excellent, a most important idea, a truly fundamental idea, but one never remembered itself the idea from one moment to the next, memory was something you simply couldn't depend on, a man's memory set him traps he'd walk into and find himself hopelessly lost in, Konrad said, a man's memory lured him into a trap and then deserted him; it happened over and over again that a man's memory lured him into a trap, or several traps, thousands of traps, and then deserted him, left him all alone, alone in limitless despair because he felt drain of all thought; Konrad had come to observe this geriatric phenomenon and had begun to be more and more terrified of it, he was in fact prepared to state that a man's youthful memory was capable of turning into an old man's memory from one moment to the next, with no warning whatsoever, suddenly you found yourself with an old man's memory, unprepared by such warning signals as a failure , from time to time, in trifling matters, brief lapses of omissions, the way a mental footbridge or gangplank might give a bit as one passed over it; no, old age set in from one moment to the next, many a man made this abrupt passage from youth to age quite early in life, a sudden shift from being the youngest to the oldest of men, a characteristic of so-called brain workers, who tended, basically, not to have a so-called extended youth, no gradual tra ~ Thomas Bernhard
Phantoms In The Brain quotes by Thomas Bernhard
But what might a woman say about church as she? What might a woman say about the church as body and bride?

Perhaps she would speak of the way a regular body moves through the world - always changing, never perfect - capable of nurturing life, not simply through the womb, but through hands, feet, eyes, voice, and brain. Every part is sacred. Every part has a function.

Perhaps she would speak of impossible expectations and all the time she's wasted trying to contort herself into the shape of those amorphous silhouettes that flit from magazines and billboards into her mind. Or of this screwed-up notion of purity as a status, as something awarded by men with tests and checklists and the power to give it and take it away.

Perhaps she would speak of the surprise of seeing herself - flaws and all - in the mirror on her wedding day. Or of the reality that with new life comes swollen breasts, dry heaves, dirty diapers, snotty noses, late-night arguments, and a whole army of new dangers and fears she never even considered before because life-giving isn't nearly as glamorous as it sounds, but it's a thousand times more beautiful.

Perhaps she would talk about being underestimated, about surprising people and surprising herself. Or about how there are moments when her own strength startles her, and moments when her weakness - her forgetfulness, her fear, her exhaustion - unnerve her.

Maybe she would tell of the time, in the mount ~ Rachel Held Evans
Phantoms In The Brain quotes by Rachel Held Evans
I'd later read up on it, because understanding something meant being able to handle it, and my problems back then had been ones I could understand. The effect was a result of the mind's idleness. We only really saw a little bit of what we looked at, and our brain worked constantly to fill in the gaps and unimportant spaces with its best guesses. In a dimly lit room, with the mind focused on the steady, hypnotic repetition, the brain would fill in spaces with the only reference points available to it, taking from features in its field of view to patch together the face. Fear, imagination and the recently-told scary story of having one's entrails ripped out through their mouth did the rest.

The mind was an amazing thing, but it had limits and weaknesses. I'd been taking in too much even before I added the clairvoyant. ~ Wildbow
Phantoms In The Brain quotes by Wildbow
That night, I took a while falling asleep and when I did, I had a strange dream. She was sitting in my rocking chair and rocking herself, her dead eyes fixed on me. I lay on my bed, paralysed with fear, unable to move, unable to scream, my limbs refusing to move to my command. The room was suddenly freezing cold, the heater had probably stopped working in the night because the electricity supply had been cut and the inverter too had run out. At one point, I was uncertain whether I was dreaming or awake, or in that strange space between dreaming and wakefulness, where the soul wanders out of the body and explores other dimensions. What I knew was that I was chilled to the bones, chilled in a way that made it impossible for me to move myself, to lever myself to a sitting position in order to switch the bedside lamp on and check whether this was really happening. I could hear her in my head. Her voice was faint, feathery, and sibilant, as if she was whispering through a curtain of rain. Her words were indistinct, she called my name, she said words that pierced through my ears, words that meshed into ice slivers in my brain and when I thought finally that I would freeze to death an ice cold tiny body climbed into the quilt with me, putting frigidly chilly arms around me, and whispered, 'Mother, I'm cold.' Icicles shot up my spine, and I sat up, bolt upright in my bed, feeling the covers fall from me and a small indent in the mattress where something had been, a moment ago. There ~ Kiran Manral
Phantoms In The Brain quotes by Kiran Manral
But the only rhyme he could summon for 'out' was 'sauerkraut,' which lacked poetic glory. He let it go. The right line would come in time. That was the thing about poetry. It crept up through the draws and coulees of the brain. ~ Annie Proulx
Phantoms In The Brain quotes by Annie Proulx
Nothing happened. And everything did. Your whole life you can be told something is wrong and so you believe it. Why should you question it? But then slowly seeds are planted inside of you, one by one, by a touch or a look or a day skateboarding in a park, and they start to burst out of old hulls shells and they start to sprout. And pretty soon there are so many of them. They are named Love and Trust and Kindness and Joy and Desire and Wonder and Spirit and Soulmate. They grow into a garden so dense and thick that it starts to invade your brain where the old things you were once told are dying. ~ Francesca Lia Block
Phantoms In The Brain quotes by Francesca Lia Block
In its evolution from a more primitive nervous system, the brain, as an organ with ten or more billion neurons and many more connections between them must have changed and grown as a result of many accidents. ~ Stanislaw Ulam
Phantoms In The Brain quotes by Stanislaw Ulam
The story comes around, pushing at our brains, and soon we are trying to ravel back to the beginning, trying to put families into order and make sense of things. But we start with one person, and soon another and another follows, and still another, until we are lost in the connections. ~ Louise Erdrich
Phantoms In The Brain quotes by Louise Erdrich
Of course you can't 'trust' what people tell you on the web anymore than you can 'trust' what people tell you on megaphones, postcards or in restaurants. Working out the social politics of who you can trust and why is, quite literally, what a very large part of our brain has evolved to do. ~ Douglas Adams
Phantoms In The Brain quotes by Douglas Adams
we have a plastic brain that changes in response to our experience. It bears repeating: The brain doesn't tell us what to do; it is part of a system in which our life experience teaches our brain what to do. So you can practice mindfulness, will power, overcoming procrastination, and other healthy new skills with the confidence that you are changing your brain. Each day's practice does some good, and if you slip and fall off your diet or exercise program or mindfulness practice, all that you have learned before is not undone; it's still there in your brain waiting for you to get back in the saddle. ~ Richard O'Connor
Phantoms In The Brain quotes by Richard O'Connor
Intellectual knowledge exists in and of the brain.
Because the brain is part of the body, which must one day expire, this collection of facts, however large and impressive, will expire as well.
Insight, however, is a function of the spirit.
Because your spirit follows you through cycle after cycle of life, death, and rebirth, you have the opportunity of cultivating insight in an ongoing fashion.
Refined over time, insight becomes pure, constant, and unwavering.
This is the beginning of immortality. ~ Lao-Tzu
Phantoms In The Brain quotes by Lao-Tzu
I came at her like a snake.
"I am fully done with other people telling me what to do with my history," I said. "My past made me who I am. There is no way to wipe it clean. I am the evidence. If you look at me and see track marks and too-skinny arms and hands that know how to hold a gun and a brain that is sharper and faster than yours, then that is not my problem. Do you hear me? I have regrets, and I have made mistakes, but I am who I am. I'm done pretending that I've wholly remade myself, that I'm going to ... to hie myself away in some lecture hall for the next four years to make you all comfortable." She was backed up against the door, now, her arms wrapped around herself, and I didn't care. "If you want to stop seeing it, you'll have to stop seeing me, and I am not going to disappear. ~ Brittany Cavallaro
Phantoms In The Brain quotes by Brittany Cavallaro
A neurosurgeon once told me about operating on the brain of a young man with epilepsy. As is customary in this kind of operation, the patient was wide awake, under
only local anesthesia, while the surgeon delicately explored his exposed cortex, makingsure that the parts tentatively to be removed were not absolutely vital by stimulating
them electrically and asking the patient what he experienced. Some stimulations provoked visual flashes or hand-raisings, others a sort of buzzing sensation, but one spot
produced a delighted response from the patient: "It's 'Outta Get Me' by Guns N' Roses.
my favorite heavy metal band!"

I asked the neurosurgeon If he had asked the patient to sing or hum along with the music, since it would be fascinating to learn how "high fidelity" the provoked memory
was, would it be in exactly the same key and tempo as the record?
Such a song (unliken"Silent Night") has one canonical version. so we could simply have superimposed a recording of the patients humming with the standard record and compared the results.
Unfortunately, even though a tape recorder had been running during the operation, thesurgeon hadn't asked the patient to sing along. 'Why not?" I asked, and he replied: "I hate rock music!'

Later in the conversation the neurosurgeon happened to remark that he was going to have to operate again on the same young man. and I expressed the hope that he would
just check to see if he could r ~ Wilder Penfield
Phantoms In The Brain quotes by Wilder Penfield
Nevertheless, if someone has an empty brain - and because of this is vexed by insanity, and is delerious - take the whole grains of wheat and cook them in water. Remove these cooked grains from the water, and place them around his whole head, tying a cloth over them. His brain will be reinvigorated by their vital fluid, and he may recover his health and strength. Do this until he returns to his right mind. If ~ Hildegard Of Bingen
Phantoms In The Brain quotes by Hildegard Of Bingen
One of the primary reasons why the human brain has evolved to look so far into the future is so that we can take actions in the present that will bring us to a better future rather than a worse one. ~ Daniel Goldstein
Phantoms In The Brain quotes by Daniel Goldstein
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