Brain Functions Quotes & Sayings

But love, first learned in a lady's eyes,
Lives not alone immured in the brain;
But, with the motion of all elements,
Courses as swift as thought in every power,
And gives to every power a double power,
Above their functions and their offices. — William Shakespeare

A researcher that has a brain that functions differently from their peers is at an advantage, as they can see things that the others cannot. — Steven Magee

Who could have foretold, from the structure of the brain, that wine could derange its functions? — Hippocrates

An inclusive narrative structure provides the executive brain with the best template and strategy for the oversight and coordination of the functions of mind. A story well told, containing conflicts and resolutions, gestures and expressions, and thoughts flavored with emotion, connects people ad integrates neural networks — Louis Cozolino

By comparison, the Integrated Human model of human nature, in addition to the two elements of our previous model, includes: A conscious analytic system, known as the slow brain (where logic resides) A subconscious intuitive system, or fast brain The full range of motivational drives (of which the drive to acquire is only one) Basic ideas of moral behavior, or moral intuitions Distinguishing characteristics, or personality traits Together, these elements of our nature provide all of the fundamental functions necessary for living life as a complete, Integrated Human - and they are the springboard for the development of leadership character. As our research data has shown, the ability to leverage all of these areas influence leadership's ability to achieve positive organizational outcomes. — Fred Kiel

The attention given to the side of the head which has received the injury, in connection with a specific reference to the side of the body nervously affected, is in itself evidence that in this case the ancient surgeon was already beginning observations on the localization of functions in the brain. — James Henry Breasted

I was never very good at math and science, to be honest, so it's fun to play a character that is so scientific and mathematical, and whose brain functions at such a high pace. The biggest difference is that Maura is very linear in her thinking and very logical. I'm not quite like that. I'm much more laid back and not quite so type A. That's the big difference. — Sasha Alexander

You love the person for who they are, flaws and all. You can't help who you love, either. It comes from a different side of your brain than the logic part that tells you that this person is horrible for you - "You should walk away!" While you're walking away, the other part of your brain is trying to gain control of your bodily functions. "Turn around! She's the one!" — Jim Carrey

The fate of the physiology of the brain is independent of the truth and falsity of my assertions relative to the laws of the organization of the nervous system, in general, and of the brain in particular, just as the knowledge of the functions of a sense is independent of the knowledge of the structure of its apparatus. — Franz Joseph Gall

In 1966, after arriving in New York, I read two of Luria's books, Higher Cortical Functions in Man and Human Brain and Psychological Processes. The latter, which contained very full case histories of patients with frontal lobe damage, filled me with admiration [4].
[Footnote 4]. And fear, for as I read it, I thought, what place is there for me in the world? Luria has already seen, said, written, and thought anything I can ever say, or write, or think. I was so upset that I tore the book in two (I had to buy a new copy for the library, as well as a copy for myself). — Oliver Sacks

The most obvious feature of the brain is that it is not homogeneous, but composed of different regions. There are no intrinsic moving parts, no obvious way of knowing where to start to understand what is actually happening, or what functions are taking place. — Susan Greenfield, Baroness Greenfield

The mind is a finer body, and resumes its functions of feeding, digesting, absorbing, excluding, and generating, in a new and ethereal element. Here, in the brain, is all the process of alimentation repeated, in the acquiring, comparing, digesting, and assimilating of experience. Here again is the mystery of generation repeated. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Your brain, Peekay, has two functions; it is a place for original thought, but also it is a reference library. Use it to tell you where to look, and then you will have for yourself all the brains that have ever been — Bryce Courtenay

Meditators are shown to have thickening in parts of the brain structure that deal with attention, memory and sensory functions. This was found to be more noticeable in older, more practiced meditators than in younger adults which is interesting because this structure usually tends to get thinner as we age. — Philippa Perry

Understanding your own anatomy and how it functions is crucial to changing your thinking and changing your life. — Toni Sorenson

Reading the e-mail was like getting an ice pick to the brain. I stared blankly at my computer, all higher mental functions short-circuited, and resisted the urge to punch the screen. — Phil Klay

There is a little gland in the brain in which the soul exercises its functions in a more particular way than in the other parts. — Rene Descartes

Consciousness, which is the "reflective" element of Norman's conceptual brain, handles the "higher" functions at the metaphorical tip of the very top of that complicated organ. Because consciousness pays a lot of attention to your thoughts, you tend to identify it with cognition. However, if you try to figure out exactly how you run your business or care for your family, you soon realize that you can't grasp that process just by thinking about it. As Norman puts it, "Consciousness also has a qualitative, sensory feel. If I say, 'I'm afraid,' it's not just my mind talking. My stomach also knots up. — Winifred Gallagher

In truth, however, the continual coming into existence of new beings and the annihilation of already existing ones is to be regarded as an illusion produced by a contrivance of two lenses (brain-functions) through which alone we can see anything at all: they are called space and time, and in their interpenetration causality. For everything we perceive under these conditions is merely phenomenon; we do not know what things are like in themselves, i.e. independently of our perception of them. This is the actual kernel of the Kantian philosophy. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Major scientific insights are characteristically intuitive, and equally characteristically described in scientific papers by linear analytical arguments. There is no anomaly in this: it is, rather, just as it should be. The creative act has major right-hemisphere components. But arguments on the
validity of the result are largely left-hemisphere functions. — Carl Sagan

It is said that the human brain divides its functions. The right brain is devoted to sensory impressions, emotions, colors, music. The left brain deals with abstract thought, logic, philosophy, analysis.
My definition of a great movie: While you're watching it, it engages your right brain. When it's over, it engages your left brain. — Roger Ebert

From watching my own mind deteriorate circuit by circuit, I learned that every ability I have, from wiggling my finger to creating language, is dependent on a group of cells inside of my brain functioning in a healthy, happy way. I realized in order to get well I had to make the cells that performed those functions well again. It gave me an entirely different way to look at myself as an individual and at all of us as people. — Jill Bolte Taylor

I consider the differences between man and animals in propensities, feelings, and intellectual faculties, to be the result of the same cause as that which we assign for the variations in other functions, viz. difference of organization; and that the superiority of man in rational endowments is not greater than the more exquisite, complicated, and perfectly developed structure of his brain, and particularly of his ample cerebral hemispheres, to which the rest of the animal kingdom offers no parallel, nor even any near approximation, is sufficient to account for. — Sir William Lawrence, 1st Baronet

Some evidence suggests the left-handers are more likely to have problems with such left-hemisphere functions as reading, writing, speaking and arithmetic; and to be more adept at such right -hemisphere functions as imagination, pattern recognition and general creativity. — Carl Sagan

Creativity is one of the most important brain functions in developing youth. It is the ultimate road to invention. I believe it is really important to both nurture and encourage this in children - and adults, too! — Sarah Michelle Gellar

Our Sages refer to Prayer as "Service of the Heart". But the heart cannot work properly unless the brain functions to stimulate and control its operation. In the physiology of Prayer, too, the mind plays as vital a role as the heart. — Immanuel Jakobovits, Baron Jakobovits

The stuff of thought is the seed of the artist. Dreams form the bristles of the artist's brush. As the eye functions as the brain's sentry, I communicate my innermost perceptions through the art, my worldview. — Arshile Gorky

2. A brain cannot think without motor function. Wrote Feldenkrais, "My fundamental contention is that the unity of mind and body is an objective reality, that these entities are not related to each other in one fashion or another, but are an inseparable whole. To put this more clearly: I contend that a brain could not think without motor functions. — Norman Doidge

The nervous system functions in a fourth, unique way, as different as dreaming is from sleeping as sleeping is from waking. When you transcend, it's the only experience that lights the full brain on an EEG machine. It's the only experience that utilizes the full brain. — David Lynch

Rather than plug a piece of hardware into our gray matter, how much more elegant to extract some brain cells, plop them into a Petri dish, and graft on various sorts of gelatinous computing goo. Slug it all back into the skull and watch it run on blood sugar, the way a human brain's supposed to. Get all the functions and features you want, without that clunky-junky twentieth-century hardware thing. — William Gibson

The ability to sympathize with those around us seems crucial to our survival, and it's connected to the mirroring functions of the brain. — Jay Parini

When we are able to use our brain functions integratively, we can use our brain and the power of consciousness for a purpose that is big enough to benefit all. — Ilchi Lee

Latent brain functions can be enabled by force majeure
when we are facing the weirdness of an unknown reality. — Toba Beta

It's a popular fact that 90 percent of the brain is not used and, like most popular facts, it is wrong ... It is used. One of its functions is to make the miraculous seem ordinary, to turn the unusual into the usual. Otherwise, human beings, faced with the daily wondrousness of everything, would go around wearing a stupid grin, saying "Wow," a lot. Part of the brain exists to stop this from happening. — Terry Pratchett

Why is it that men reduce themselves to one-liners and bad movie quotes whenever they get into a fight?" said Parker. "Is there some kind of script they're supposed to follow when they get to this point? Or does the raging testosterone just shut down their higher brain functions? — Matt Forbeck

The brain has only three functions: open, closed, or deprived. — Anthony Liccione

The back and center part of our brains, containing the brain stem, cerebellum, and basal ganglia, are almost identical to the brains of reptiles. Known as the "reptilian brain," these are the oldest structures of the brain, governing basic animal functions such as balance, breathing, digestion, heartbeat, and blood pressure. They also control behaviors such as fighting, hunting, mating, and territoriality, which are necessary for survival and reproduction. The reptilian brain can be traced back about 500 million years. (See Figure 3.) — Michio Kaku

While functions being unable to change state is good because it helps us reason about our programs, there's one problem with that. If a function can't change anything in the world, how is it supposed to tell us what it calculated? In order to tell us what it calculated, it has to change the state of an output device (usually the state of the screen), which then emits photons that travel to our brain and change the state of our mind, man. — Miran Lipovaca

Language is one of the more complex human cognitive functions," Narly Golestani, Group Leader of the university's Brain and Language Lab, tells me during a recent visit. "There's been a lot of work on bilingualism. Interpretation goes one step beyond that because the two languages are active simultaneously. And not just in one modality, because you have perception and production at the same time. So the brain regions involved go to an extremely high level, beyond language"["In other words: inside the lives and minds of real-time translators," Mosaic, November 18, 2014]. — Geoff Watts

Mike's brain was hardwired directly into his genitals and most higher functions appeared to have switched themselves off. In other words, he was just like most men. — Jackson Radcliffe

The future of human relationships will be directly related to the cerebral functions. For this reason it is already a fundamental thing. In the past, and well until today, some South American countries have had a great neuropharmacological history, since the natives' times. It is necessary that we remind ourselves of the many licit and illicit drugs that were generated in our continent and that act on the brain. — Rodolfo Llinas

Studies by Andrew Newberg and others have shown that long-term practice of meditation produces significant alterations in cerebral blood flow in parts of the brain related to attention, emotion, and some autonomic functions. — Oliver Sacks

Already man uses innumerable gadgets to displace the work done by bodily organs in the animals, and it would surely be in line with this tendency to externalize the reasoning functions of the brain
and thus hand over the government of life to electromagnetic monsters. In other words, the interests and goals of rationality are not those of man as a whole organism. If we are to live for the future, and to make the chief work of the mind prediction and calculation, man must eventually become a parasitic appendage to a mass of clockwork. — Alan W. Watts

Planning. Short-term memory. Attention. At first glance, these three frontal lobe functions can seem like diverse activities that just happen to be packed into the same brain region. But on closer inspection it turns out that they are facets of the same basic phenomenon of 'restraint'. Planning restrains our brains from wandering from a chosen path of activity. Short-term memory retrains sensory cortex from moving on to different imagery. Attention constrains the kind of sensory data admitted to sensory cortex. — Robert Jourdain

One of the most bizarre and intriguing findings is that people with brain damage may be particularly good investors. Why? Because damage to certain parts of the brain can impair the emotional responses that cause the rest of us to do foolish things. A team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, and the University of Iowa conducted an experiment that compared the investment decisions made by fifteen patients with damage to the areas of the brain that control emotions (but with intact logic and cognitive functions) to the investment decisions made by a control group. The brain-damaged investors finished the game with 13 percent more money than the control group, largely, the authors believe, because they do not experience fear and anxiety. The impaired investors took more risks when there were high potential payoffs and got less emotional when they made losses.7 This — Charles Wheelan

The brain is not, like the liver, heart and other internal organs, capable from the moment of birth of all the functions which it ever discharges; for while in common with them, it has certain duties for the exercise of which it is especially intended, its high character in man, as the organ of conscious life, the supreme instrument of his relations with the rest of nature, is developed only by a long and patient training. — Ray V. Pierce

A person cannot direct his emotional life in the way he bids his motor system to reach for a cup. He cannot will himself to want the right thing or to love the right person or to be happy after a disappointment, or even to be happy in happy times. People lack this capacity not through a deficiency of discipline but because the jurisdiction of will is limited to the latest brain and to those functions within its purview. Emotional life can be influenced, but it cannot be commanded. — Thomas Lewis

The causal, abstract, binary, holistic, and reductionist functions of the human brain all help you to process the enormous amount of information coming into our brain from the external world every day. — Abhijit Naskar

Much of what we now consider 'personality' will be explained away as structural and chemical functions of the brain. — Douglas Coupland

Reading literary fiction stimulates cognition beyond the brain functions related to reading, say, magazine articles, interviews, or most online nonfiction reporting. — Susan Reynolds

An immune system of enormous complexity is present in all vertebrate animals. When we place a population of lymphocytes from such an animal in appropriate tissue culture fluid, and when we add an antigen, the lymphocytes will produce specific antibody molecules, in the absense of any nerve cells. I find it astonishing that the immune system embodies a degree of complexity which suggests some more or less superficial though striking analogies with human language, and that this cognitive system has evolved and functions without assistance of the brain. — Niels Kaj Jerne

- I won't be able to think. I won't be able to work.
- Nothing will interfere with your work like suicide.
(Silence)
- I dreamt that I went to the doctor's and she gave me eight minutes to live. I'd been sitting in the fucking waiting room for half an hour.
(A long silence)
- Okay, let's do it, let's do the drugs, let's do the chemical lobotomy, let's shut down the higher functions of my brain and perhaps I'll be a bit more fucking capable of living.
Let's do it. — Sarah Kane

Our surmises regarding the subtle functions of neural processes within the brain are profoundly constrained by the fact that the brain did not evolve in order to understand itself. The complex organization of the brain evolved as a consequence of our sensorial and muscled engagement with the landscapes that surround us. — David Abram

Love is a bug in the brain's electrical functions. — Hajime Kamoshida

It's just death and resurrection, over and over again, day after day, as God reaches down into our deepest graves and with the same power that raised Jesus from the dead wrests us from our pride, our apathy, our fear, our prejudice, our anger, our hurt, and our despair. Most days I don't know which is harder for me to believe: that God reanimated the brain functions of a man three days dead, or that God can bring back to life all the beautiful things we have killed. Both seem pretty unlikely to me. — Rachel Held Evans

Both scientists and laypeople can find themselves seduced into the easy trap of wanting to assign each function of the brain to a specific location. Perhaps because of pressure for simple sound bites, a steady stream of reports in the media (and even in the scientific literature) has created the false impression that the brain area for such-and-such has just been discovered. Such reports feed popular expectation and hope for easy labeling, but the true situation is much more interesting: the continuous networks of neural circuitry accomplish their functions using multiple, independently discovered strategies. The brain lends itself well to the complexity of the world, but poorly to clear-cut cartography. — David Eagleman

Intuition is not clairvoyance. It's not guesswork either. Intuition is executive summary, that 90 percent of the higher brain that functions subconsciously - but no less rigorously - than the self-aware subroutine that thinks of itself as the person. — Peter Watts

The glial-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) that he referred to is a brain growth factor. It functions like a growth-promoting fertilizer in the brain. GDNF is made by glial cells, one of the major types of cells in the brain. Fifteen percent of our brain cells are neurons; the other 85 percent are glial cells. — Norman Doidge

Talent can be a nice thing to have sometimes. You look good, attract attention, and if you're lucky, you make some money. Women flock to you. In that sense, having talent's preferable to having none. But talent only functions when it's supported by a tough, unyielding physical and mental focus. All it takes is one screw in your brain to come loose and fall off, or some connection in your body to break down, and your concentration vanishes, like the dew at dawn.
[ ... ]
If talent's the foundation you rely on, and yet it's so unreliable that you have no idea what's going to happen to it the next minute, what meaning does it have? — Haruki Murakami

When it had all become too much for the pixie, her brain had simply shut down, all except the most vital functions. She still breathed, and occasionally the monitors registered a dream spike in her brainwaves. But other than that, for all intents and purposes, Opal Koboi was no more. — Eoin Colfer

In modern neurotheology we examine the physical bases to spiritual, religious and mystical experiences and beliefs, that implicitly appear to reduce this rich phenomenology to only neuronal functions. So, the thing is, there was no divine intervention necessary in the evolution of spirituality and religiosity. "Human Brain is the true God of all beliefs". — Abhijit Naskar

When you understand how the mind-brain functions together, you know that faith, which is believing before seeing, is the natural process of creation. — Robert Anthony

There are several patients - there are thousands of patients, tens of thousands of patients, that carry either a stimulator in the brain or in the periphery, in the inner ear, to restore neurological functions or to control diseases like Parkinson's disease. — Miguel Nicolelis

Today, you have neuroscientists working on a genetic, behavioural or cognitive level, and then you have informaticians, chemists and mathematicians. They all have their own understanding of how the brain functions and is structured. How do you get them all around the same table? — Henry Markram

Funny thing, your brain,
how it always functions on one
level or another. How, even stuck in
some sort of subconcious limbo, it works
your lungs, your muscle twitches, your heart,
in fact, in symphony with your heart, allowing it
to feel love. Pain. Jealousy. Guilt. I wonder if it's the
same for people, lost in comas. Is there really such a thing — Ellen Hopkins

There was a sergeant at a desk. I knew he was a sergeant because I recognized the marks on his uniform, and I knew it was a desk because it's always a desk. There's always someone at a desk, except when it's a table that functions as a desk. You sit behind a desk, and everyone knows you're supposed to be there, and that you're doing something that involves your brain. It's an odd, special kind of importance. I think everyone should get a desk; you can sit behind it when you feel like you don't matter. — Steven Brust

Physically my brain is in great shape. My motor functions are fine, but I think going through the whole ordeal ... coming pretty close to death, may have affected my priorities. — Bill Berry

In a structure as complex as the human brain a multitude of things can go wrong. The wonder is that for most people the brain functions effectively and unceasingly for more than 60 years. — Seymour S. Kety

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

Whoever would not remain in complete ignorance of the resources which cause him to act; whoever would seize, at a single philosophical glance, the nature of man and animals, and their relations to external objects; whoever would establish, on the intellectual and moral functions, a solid doctrine of mental diseases, of the general and governing influence of the brain in the states of health and disease, should know, that it is indispensable, that the study of the organization of the brain should march side by side with that of its functions. — Franz Joseph Gall

If we can map the retina, that will help us understand how it functions in vision, as well as devise new ways of repairing its malfunctions. And if we can really figure out the retina, perhaps we will have a shot at figuring out the vastly more complicated brain. — Sebastian Seung

Why do you think an egg yolk is full of cholesterol? Because it takes a lot of cholesterol to build a healthy chicken. It also takes a hell of a lot to build and maintain a healthy human being. "In fact, cholesterol is so vital that almost all cells can manufacture cholesterol; one of the key functions of the liver is to synthesize cholesterol. It's vital for the proper functioning of the brain and it's the building block for most sex hormones." -- — David H. Leake

just as America was the first modern land where people could practice freedom of religion, perhaps someday America will be a place where we enjoy freedom from religion, and discover true spirituality through the awakening of our higher brain functions. — Alberto Villoldo

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

How is the mind which functions on knowledge how is the brain which is recording all the time to end, to see the importance of recording and not let it move in any other direction? Very simply: you insult me, you hurt me, by word, gesture, by an actual act; that leaves a mark on the brain which is memory. That memory is knowledge, that knowledge is going to interfere in my meeting you next time obviously. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

The hypothalamus is one of the most important parts of the brain, involved in many kinds of motivation, among other functions. The hypothalamus controls the "Four F's": fighting, fleeing, feeding, and mating. — Marvin Dunnette

The brain-disease model overlooks four fundamental truths: (1) our capacity to destroy one another is matched by our capacity to heal one another. Restoring relationships and community is central to restoring well-being; (2) language gives us the power to change ourselves and others by communicating our experiences, helping us to define what we know, and finding a common sense of meaning; (3) we have the ability to regulate our own physiology, including some of the so-called involuntary functions of the body and brain, through such basic activities as breathing, moving, and touching; and (4) we can change social conditions to create environments in which children and adults can feel safe and where they can thrive. — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

The seat of the soul and the control of voluntary movement - in fact, of nervous functions in general, - are to be sought in the heart. The brain is an organ of minor importance. — Aristotle.