Brain Disorders Quotes & Sayings

You don't just wake up one day with dementia or Alzheimer's; these conditions are developmental. Even when a problem triggers the need to collect data, it's reviewed by a specialist and filed away. There's no central repository allowing information to be shared across a multitude of researchers worldwide. — Tan Le

People with dissociative disorders are like actors trapped in a variety of roles. They have difficulty integrating their memories, their sense of identity and aspects of their consciousness into a continuous whole. They find many parts of their experience alien, as if belonging to someone else. They cannot remember or make sense of parts of their past. — David Speigel

Often," she said, "physical ailments drive the mental. The brain is an organ, after all. Someday, people will understand that better and stop treating mental disorders as if they're this untouchable entity separated from the biological, like an ugly secret hiding beneath our skulls. — Anne McAneny

They were smart and sophisticated, with an air of independence about them, and so casual about their looks and clothes and manners as to be almost slapdash. I don't know if I realized as soon as I began seeing them that they represented the wave of the future, but I do know I was drawn to them. I shared their restlessness, understood their determination to free themselves of the Victorian shackles of the pre-World War I era and find out for themselves what life was all about. — Colleen Moore

We live longer and healthier lives than ever before. Animal research has improved the treatment of infections, helped with immunisation, improved cancer treatment and had a big impact on managing heart disease, brain disorders, arthritis and transplantation. — Robert Winston

Now I can add prostitute to my list of life's accomplishments. — Augusten Burroughs

Researchers have known for some time now that the cornerstone of all degenerative conditions, including brain disorders, is inflammation. But what they didn't have documented until now are the instigators of that inflammation - the first missteps that prompt this deadly reaction. And what they are finding is that gluten, and a high-carbohydrate diet for that matter, are among the most prominent stimulators of inflammatory pathways that reach the brain. — David Perlmutter

When looking at the brain, it is important to go beyond its structure to its function. This is because often in cognitive disorders, the structure of the brain is intact, but its function is compromised. — Aditi Shankardass

It is not customary to refer to organisms when we talk about brain
and mind. It has been so obvious that mind arises from the activity
of neurons that only neurons are discussed as if their operation
could be independent from that of the rest of the organism. But as I
investigated disorders of memory, language, and reason in numerous
human beings with brain damage, the idea that mental activity, from
its simplest aspects to its most sublime, requires both brain and body
proper became especially compelling. — Antonio R. Damasio

The origin of brain disease is in many cases predominantly dietary. Although several factors play into the genesis and progression of brain disorders, to a large extent numerous neurological afflictions often reflect the mistake of consuming too many carbs and too few healthy fats. — David Perlmutter

Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, brain and spinal cord disorders, diabetes, cancer, at least 58 diseases could potentially be cured through stem cell research, diseases that touch every family in America and in the world. — Rosa DeLauro

Panksepp is emphatic on this point, arguing that his neural studies as well as those of his colleagues show that the prime, fundamental emotions of humans and all mammals do not emerge from the cerebral cortex, as was commonly believed in the twentieth century and as some leading neuroscientists still claim, but come from deep, ancient brain structures, including the hypothalamus and amygdala. It is why, he notes, that "drugs used to treat emotional and psychiatric disorders in humans were first developed and found effective in animals - rats and mice. This kind of research would obviously have no value if animals were incapable of experiencing these emotional states, or if we did not share them. — Virginia Morell

Anyone who suffers from anxiety or depression should remember that an unhappy gut can be the cause of an unhappy mind. Sometimes, the gut has a perfect right to be unhappy, if it is dealing with an undetected food intolerance, for example. We should not always blame depression on the brain or on our life circumstances - there is much more to us than that. — Giulia Enders

What Walter thinks is that people are like rivers. We never stay in the same place but jest keep flowing along, learning new stuff and picking up new experiences and changing all the time. So today's you isn't the same as yesterday's you and won't be the same as tomorrow's you.
But Walter also thinks that there's a real perfect you that you're always trying to get to, and the better you are at living your life, the closer you come to it. — Rebecca Rupp

Both depression and anxiety disorders, for example, are repeatedly described in the media as 'chemical imbalances in the brain,' as if spontaneous neural events with no relation to anything outside a person's brain cause depression and anxiety. — Siri Hustvedt

it seems to me that, on balance, soul/body dualism has been the enemy of compassion. For instance, the moral stigma that still surrounds disorders of mood and cognition seems largely the result of viewing the mind as distinct from the brain. When the pancreas fails to produce insulin, there is no shame in taking synthetic insulin to compensate for its lost function. — Sam Harris

This pause in time, within time ... When did I first experience the exquisite sense of surrender that is only possible with another person? The peace of mind one experiences on one's own, one's certainty of self in the serenity of solitude, are nothing in comparison to the release and openness and fluency one shares with another, in close companionship ... — Muriel Barbery

If David had been diagnosed with diabetes at a young age, members of his family, school, and church would have undoubtedly mobilized support. His caregivers would have communicated his need for dietary changes, exercise, and/or insulin. This was not the case when David exhibited the earliest signs of depression. The myth persists that mental illness is a character flaw. It is my hope that one day disorders of the brain will be treated with as much care, compassion, and tenacity as diseases of any other organs in our bodies. — Sheila Hamilton

In my practice I use neurofeedback primarily to help with the hyperarousal, confusion, and concentration problems of people who suffer from developmental trauma. However, it has also shown good results for numerous issues and conditions that go beyond the scope of this book, including relieving tension headaches, improving cognitive functioning following a traumatic brain injury, reducing anxiety and panic attacks, learning to deepen meditation states, treating autism, improving seizure control, self-regulation in mood disorders, and more. — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

In the course of my travels I met a scientist who enabled people who had been blind since birth to begin to see, another who enabled the deaf to hear; I spoke with people who had had strokes decades before and had been declared incurable, who were helped to recover with neuroplastic treatments; I met people whose learning disorders were cured and whose IQs were raised; I saw evidence that it is possible for eighty-year-olds to sharpen their memories to function the way they did when they were fifty-five. I saw people rewire their brains with their thoughts, to cure previously incurable obsessions and traumas. I spoke with Nobel laureates who were hotly debating how we must rethink our model of the brain now that we know it is ever changing. The — Norman Doidge

Speechlessness, however, affirmed in the diagnosis, is carefully based on the facts of the examination, as we see by rendering the statements concerned, just as they stand in examination and diagnosis: If thou examinest a man having a wound in the temple, ... ; if thou ask of him concerning his malady and he speak not to thee; ... ; thou shouldst say concerning him, 'One having a wound in his temple, ... (and) he is speechless'. — James Henry Breasted

Now, why is it that most of us can talk openly about the illnesses of our bodies, but when it comes to our brain and illnesses of the mind we clam up and because we clam up, people with emotional disorders feel ashamed, stigmatized, and don't seek the help that can make the difference. — Kirk Douglas

The fear, though, is unassailable. The dark balls of dread pinball through my brain. This is what anxiety does to a brain, I know that. A barrage of intrusive, unwanted, and distressing thoughts that the person thinking them can't turn them off no matter how hard they try... — Lauren Miller

The first duty of a man is to love himself. When someone loves himself, he is loving the universe. This universe is existing because of you. — Debasish Mridha

Back in Minneapolis, I said I would go to American. I have a remarkable ability to delete all better judgment from my brain when I get my head set on something. Everything is done at all costs. I have no sense of moderation, no sense of caution. I have no sense, pretty much. People with eating disorders tend to be very diametrical thinkers-everything is the end of the world, everything rides on this one thing, and everyone tells you you're very dramatic, very intense, and they see it as an affectation, but it's actually just how you think. It really seems to you that the sky will fall if you are not personally holding it up. On the one hand, this is sheer arrogance; on the other hand, this is a very real fear. And it isn't that you ignore the potential repercussions of your actions. You don't think there are any. — Marya Hornbacher

I remember being young in the 1960s ... we had a great sense of the future, a great big hope. This is what is missing in the youth today. This being able to dream and to change the world. — Bernardo Bertolucci

Time is a slippery concept, and we are often wrong about it ... All too often we find ourselves looking in the right places at the wrong times. — Frank Partnoy

Metacognitive disorders can be interpreted in terms of early, historical views in which the frontal cortex is considered responsible for abstract reasoning, planning, and problem solving (see Goldstein, 1936; Halstead, 1947). Such complex, high-level characterizations of metacognition do not lend themselves easily to contributions of specific cognitive (or brain) components that mediate performance on metacognitive tasks. As such — Anonymous

Scientists have made extraordinary advances in understanding the brain and its disorders. — Kay Redfield Jamison

I think maybe I'm trying to forget or not be so conscious about plastic circuitry and just go for the feeling. — Mark Linkous

After a long period of not drawing, you have to, like, relearn how to draw. It's not very fun. — Bryan Lee O'Malley

And what science had revealed was this: Prior to treatment, patients diagnosed with schizophrenia, depression, and other psychiatric disorders do not suffer from any known "chemical imbalance". However, once a person is put on a psychiatric medication, which, in one manner or another, throws a wrench into the usual mechanics of a neuronal pathway, his or her brain begins to function, as Hyman observed, abnormally. — Robert Whitaker

I'd laugh, only my stupid lizard brain has disabled the laugh button for now. I'm too frozen up with tension.
I am owed so much laughter. Sometimes I hope I'm building up a stockpile of missing laughs, and when I've recovered, they'll all come exploding out in one gigantic fit that last twenty-four hours. — Sophie Kinsella

It was always hard work to push through a crowed of reporters with the scent of blood in their nostrils. You might not think so, since on camera they appear to be brain-damaged wimps with severe eating disorders. But put them at a police barricade and a miraculous thing happens ... The strength comes from some mysterious place-and somehow, when there is gore on the ground, these anorexic creatures can push their way through anything. Without mussing their hair, too. — Jeff Lindsay

The elegant study ... is consistent with the themes of modern cognitive neuroscience . Every aspect of thought and emotion is rooted in brain structure and function, including many psychological disorders and, presumably, genius. The study confirms that the brain is a modular system comprising multiple intelligences, mostly nonverbal. — Steven Pinker

That was something that I learned from Alan Ball from "Six Feet Under." He didn't really like to have too many pop culture references because they don't really hold up after a few years. — Jill Soloway

I am angry that I starved my brain and that I sat shivering in my bed at night instead of dancing or reading poetry or eating ice cream or kissing a boy ... — Laurie Halse Anderson

The brain is the man; its health is essential for normal living; its disorders are surely the most profound of human miseries; and its destruction annihilates a person humanly, however intact his body. — H. Chandler Elliott