Michael Merzenich Quotes & Sayings

Your brain - every brain - is a work in progress. It is 'plastic.' From the day we're born to the day we die, it continuously revises and remodels, improving or slowly declining, as a function of how we use it. — Michael Merzenich

The patterns of activity of neurons in sensory areas can be altered by patterns of attention. Experience coupled with attention leads to physical changes in the structure and future functioning of the nervous system. This leaves us with a clear physiological fact ... moment by moment we choose and sculpt how our ever-changing minds will work. We choose who we will be in the next moment in a very real sense, and these choices are left embossed in physical form in our material selves. — Michael Merzenich

To learn is to change how you think. — Michael Merzenich

My brain power depends on my retained mastery of analyzing in detail what's happening in my world and in my mind and body. I must continue to practice to retain my constructive and analytic powers. The goal is to be a master of my environment. — Michael Merzenich

My mantra: Brainless exercise is a lost opportunity for improvement. — Michael Merzenich

Whatever the circumstances of a child's early life, and whatever the history and current state of that child, every human has the built-in power to improve, to change for the better, to significantly restore and often to recover. Tomorrow, that person you see in the mirror can be a stronger, more capable, livelier, more powerfully centered, and still-growing person. — Michael Merzenich

If a brain is exercised properly, anyone can grow intelligence, at any age, and potentially by a lot. Or you can just let your brain idle - and watch it slowly, inexorably, go to seed like a sedentary body. — Michael Merzenich

Learning a new skill can change hundreds of millions of cortical connections. — Michael Merzenich

The Internet is just one of those things that contemporary humans can spend millions of 'practice' events at, that the average human a thousand years ago had absolutely no exposure to. Our brains are massively remodeled by this exposure-but so, too, by reading, by television, by video games, by modern electronics, by contemporary music, by contemporary 'tools,' etc. — Michael Merzenich

Rather marvelously, the older brain only permits change when it judges that change to be important, rewarding or good for it. — Michael Merzenich