Schnapper Neurology Quotes

She hoped I would send her some of my papers on neurology, of which I'll understand not one word, but will glow with loving pride at my ridiculous, brilliant and altogether delightful nephew. ~ Oliver Sacks

To restore the human subject at the centre - the suffering, afflicted, fighting, human subject - we must deepen a case history to a narrative or tale; only then do we have a 'who' as well as a 'what', a real person, a patient, in relation to disease - in relation to the physical.
The patient's essential being is very relevant in the higher reaches of neurology, and in psychology; for here the patient's personhood is essentially involved, and the study of disease and of identity cannot be disjoined. ~ Oliver Sacks

The Kingdom of God is an earthly experience which manifests in an unearthly manner. ~ Abhijit Naskar

NEUROLOGY: NEW BRAIN NEURONS FOUND TO OVERWRITE OLD MEMORIES ~ Anonymous

In this universe, all we perceive is a virtual reality created by the neurons. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Every moment, we create a new reality, and then the earlier reality loses its accountability. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Recently, the search for what he calls "the splinters that make up different attention problems" has taken Castellanos in a new direction. First, he explains that your brain is far less concerned with your brilliant ideas or searing emotions than with its own internal "gyroscopic busyness," which consumes 65 percent of its total energy. Every fifty seconds, its activity fluctuates, causing what he calls a "brownout." No one knows the purpose of these neurological events, but Castellanos has a thesis: the clockwork pulses enable the brain's circuits to stay "logged on" and available to communicate with one another, even when they're not being used. "Imagine you're a cabdriver on your day off," Castellanos says. "You don't need to use your workday circuits on a Sunday, but to keep those channels open, your brain sends a ping through them every minute or so. The fluctuations are the brain's investment in maintaining its circuits online. ~ Winifred Gallagher

Even though it is common knowledge in our field of Neuroscience, I take immense pleasure every time I realize that our perception of the whole universe emerges from the activity of the little specks of jelly inside our skull. ~ Abhijit Naskar

I guess I was sad that love was not real? Or not all that real, anyway? I guess I was sad that love could feel so real and the next minute be gone, and all because of something Abnesti was doing. ~ George Saunders

Lithium regulates the proteins that control the body's inner clock. This clock runs, oddly, on DNA, inside special neurons deep in the brain. Special proteins attach to people's DNA each morning, and after a fixed time they degrade and fall off. Sunlight resets the proteins over and over, so they hold on much longer. In fact, the proteins fall off only after darkness falls - at which point the brain should "notice" the bare DNA and stop producing stimulants. This process goes awry in manic-depressives because the proteins, despite the lack of sunlight, remain bound fast to their DNA. Their brains don't realize they should stop revving. Lithium helps cleave the proteins from DNA so people can wind down. Notice that sunlight still trumps lithium during the day and resets the proteins; it's only when the sunlight goes away at night that lithium helps DNA shake free. Far from being sunshine in a pill, then, lithium acts as "anti-sunlight." Neurologically, it undoes sunlight and thereby compresses the circadian clock back to twenty-four hours - preventing both the mania bubble from forming and the Black Tuesday crash into depression. ~ Sam Kean

In a sense, habits never really disappear. Once formed, they always remain in our neurology. ~ Charles Duhigg

There were only 170 neurologists in Britain then and, whether spoken or unspoken, there was this insidious feeling. How can Bannister, a mere athlete, probably spoilt by all the publicity and fame, dare aspire to neurology? But I'd done a lot of research, and my academic record was very good. ~ Roger Bannister

Memory is the coherence of life, that possesses all your emotions, and ambitions. Without it, your joyous as well as agonizing experiences of life won't have any significance to you whatsoever. ~ Abhijit Naskar

What could we do? What should we do? 'There are no prescriptions,' Luria wrote, 'in a case like this. Do whatever your ingenuity and your heart suggest. There is little or no hope of any recovery in his memory. But a man does not consist of memory alone. He has feeling, will, sensibilities, moral being - matters of which neuropsychology cannot speak. And it is here, beyond the realm of an impersonal psychology, that you may find ways to touch him, and change him. [...] Neuropsychologically, there is little or nothing you can do; but in the realm of the Individual, there may be much you can do. ~ Oliver Sacks

I think in our time, you know, so much of the information we get is pre-polarized. Fiction has a way of reminding us that we actually are very similar in our emotions and our neurology and our desires and our fears, so I think it's a nice way to neutralize that polarization. ~ George Saunders

judgment is the most important faculty we have. An animal, or a man, may get on very well without 'abstract attitude' but will speedily perish if deprived of judgment. Judgment must be the first faculty of higher life or mind - yet it is ignored, or misinterpreted, by classical (computational) neurology. And if we wonder how such an absurdity can arise, we find it in the assumptions, or the evolution, of neurology itself. ~ Oliver Sacks

The [mental] organization of grammar [is] a case where complexity in the mind is not caused by learning; learning is caused by complexity in the mind. ~ Steven Pinker

The neurons create who you are. They create your passions. They create your ambitions. They create your unique identity, based on experiences. ~ Abhijit Naskar

The mind, it occurs to me, is an engine. There is an ambient mode in which the mind sits idling, before there is information. Some minds idle in a kind of dreading crouch, waiting to be offended. Others stand up straight, eyes slightly wide, expecting to be pleasantly surprised. Some minds, imaging the great What Is Out There, imagine it intends doom for them; others imagine there is something out there that may be suffering and in need of their help.
Which is right?
Neither.
Both.
Maybe all of our politics is simply neurology writ large. Maybe there are a finite number of idling modes. Maybe there are just two broad modes, and out of this fact comes our current division. ~ George Saunders

Nonconformists aren't just going against the grain; they're going against the brain. Either their brains aren't taking the easy way out to begin with, or in standing apart from their peers, these students are standing up to their biology. ~ Alexandra Robbins

Consciousness is simply the brain's neural response to its surrounding environmental stimuli. Hence when the neural circuits malfunction, Consciousness tends to malfunction as well. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Your brain secretly wants that song, because it's so familiar to everything else you've already heard and liked. It just sounds right." There is evidence that a preference for things that sound "familiar" is a product of our neurology. ~ Charles Duhigg

Genesis prepared Samantha's intellect upgrade she was a plain, homely woman quite dismal in appearance, her eyes tarnished with the signs of fatigue like weary stars about to extinguish their light after their existence had expired. She was attempting to secure a highly sought after, well respected research post in neurology as well as seeking to impress a research professor she had her eye on and desired to capture his unsuspecting heart with her knowledge. ~ Jill Thrussell

The later-afternoon air of our exhalations hung in brief clouds before us. The thought balloon of my own breath said, "How have I found myself here?" It was not a theological question. It was one of transportation and neurology. ~ Lorrie Moore

Neuroscience is a science in its infancy. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Each of us is on our own trajectory – steered by our genes and our experiences – and as a result every brain has a different internal life. Brains are as unique as snowflakes. ~ David Eagleman

Cognitive reality of an individual solely arises from the make-up of that individual's brain structure. Any kind of damage, like stroke can alter this reality without the awareness of the individual. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Women, churchgoers, and conservative were more likely than men, nonchurch goers, and liberals to disagree with the reductionist (neural) account of human life. ~ Andrew Ferguson

Look, you can't think of a person like it's one thing, one 'I' that decides everything. The brain is a collective, a huge number of all these thinking modules. It doesn't make a decision, it arrives at one. ~ Daryl Gregory

New developments in neurology provide biological explanations for how our learning is affected by our feelings.167 We learn best in stimulating environments when we feel sure we can succeed. ~ Richard G. Wilkinson

One of the awesome things about being a writer is that I can research nearly anything - tea? Bubblegum? Ants? Neurology? Chocolate? Textile production? It doesn't matter. It's all productive work. ~ Ann Leckie

The human brain is the universe's most implausible science experiment. ~ Will Boast

What if there was something essentially wrong with Claude Sylvanshine that wasn't wrong with other people? What if he was simple ill-suited, the way some people are born without limbs or certain organs? The neurology of failure. What if he was simply born and destined to live in the shadow of Total Fear and Despair, and all his so-called activities were pathetic attempts to distract him from the inevitable? ~ David Foster Wallace

The spirits of the brain are directly connected to the testicles. This is why men who weary their imagination in books are less suitable for procreative functions ... ~ Louis De La Forge

If I ask you, are you conscious right now? You'd go right ahead and tell me - yes. That's because your conscious mind is constructing an awareness in you about everything around you. And underneath that operation of your conscious mind, there are billions of neurons working in proper harmony. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Neuroscience in no longer simply the science of the nervous system. It is the actual empirical science of self-awareness. ~ Abhijit Naskar

All answers lie in the neurons. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Neurology takes a positive view toward god and prayer. And relinquishing, which is what god and prayer is about. It is always turning your will over to a higher power and letting the will of the world and not your extraordinary manipulations lead you to your desired result. I always say that, it is my constant prayer: god, if you are out there, watch over me and your will, not mine, be done. That is what will happen anyway, but I pray for release from the dreadful fight. ~ Elizabeth Wurtzel

I may be in deep slop if the findings of a new study published in the latest issue of Neurology, journal of the American Academy of Neurology, prove to be true. The study conducted by University of Eastern Finland tested 1,449 people averaging 71 years of age and found that the subjects labeled "highly cynical" had a 2.54 times greater risk of developing dementia than those with the lowest cynicism rating.

I'd better tell my youngest son, Andy, about the study, too. I think he became a cynic before he turned 30, the predictable result of the massive self-administered force-feedings of the Story of Man in his pursuit of a Ph.D. in American history.

In Andy's defense, reading too much, too soon, of our track record on earth would make a cynic of anyone. Fortunately, his perusals have turned him into a champion of the underdog as well, another inevitability of historical research, particularly studies of our brutal conquest of the American West. ~ Lionel Fisher