Quotes & Sayings About The Cerebral Cortex

We possess no criterion which enables us to distinguish exactly between a psychical process and a physiological one, between an act occurring in the cerebral cortex and one occurring in the sub-cortical substance; for 'consciousness', whatever that may be, is not attached to every activity of the cerebral cortex, nor is it always attached in an equal degree to any particular one of its activities; it is not a thing which is bound up with any locality in the nervous system. — Sigmund Freud

It's also awkward to be so short you can see all the way up into someone's cerebral cortex, but welcome to my life. — Ashley Poston

Attention words. A single word wasn't enough. Not even for a particular segment. The brain had defenses, filters evolved over millions of years to protect against manipulation. The first was perception, the process of funneling an ocean of sensory input down to a few key data packages worthy of study by the cerebral cortex. When data got by the perception filter, it received attention. And she saw now that it must be like that all the way down: There must be words to attack each filter. Attention words and then maybe desire words and logic words and urgency words and command words. This was what they were teaching her. How to craft a string of words that would disable the filters one by one, unlocking each mental tumbler until the mind's last door swung open. — Max Barry

Cannabis affects the brain because brain cells themselves produce cannabis-like neurotransmitters. The first such compound to be identified was christened anandamide, ananda being Sanskrit for "bliss." The proteins that transmit anandamide's message to the brain, the receptors, are mainly located in the striatum (hence the blissful feeling) and in the cerebellum (hence the unsteady gait after taking marijuana), in the cerebral cortex (hence the problems with association, the fragmented thoughts and confusion), and in the hippocampus (hence the memory impairment). But there are no receptors in the brain stem areas that regulate blood pressure and breathing. That's why it's impossible to take an overdose of cannabis, as opposed to opiates. — D.F. Swaab

The Blue Brain project expects to have a full human-scale simulation of the cerebral cortex by 2018. I think that's a little optimistic, actually, but I do make the case that by 2029 we will have very detailed models and simulations of all the different brain regions. — Ray Kurzweil

There is one brain organ that is optimised for understanding and articulating logical processes and that is the outer layer of the brain, called the cerebral cortex. Unlike the rest of the brain, this relatively recent evolutionary development is rather flat, only about 0.32 cm (0.12 in) thick and includes a mere 6 million neurons. This elaborately folded organ provides us with what little competence we do possess for understanding what we do and who we do it. — Ray Kurzweil

So, you can define emotions very simply as the process of perceiving what is going on in the organs when you are in the throws of an emotion, and that is achieved by a collection of structures, some of which are in the brain stem, and some of which are in the cerebral cortex, namely the insular cortex, which I like to mention not because I think it's the most important, it's not. — Antonio Damasio

Civilization is a product of the cerebral cortex. — Carl Sagan

The minds of others are stranger depths to employ our hearts to than our own wonderland of cerebral cortex. — Jennifer Megan Varnadore

We live in the Age of the Higher Brain, the cerebral cortex that has grown enormously over the last few millennia, overshadowing the ancient, instinctive lower brain. The cortex is often called the new brain, yet the old brain held sway in humans for millions of years, as it does today in most living things. The old brain can't conjure up ideas or read. But it does possess the power to feel and, above all, to be. It was the old brain that caused our forebears to sense the closeness of a mysterious presence everywhere in Nature. — Deepak Chopra

Chorea - a twinkling movement or motor scintillation - does not have its origin in the cerebral cortex, but in the deeper parts of the brain, the basal ganglia and upper brainstem, which are the parts that mediate normal awakening. Thus these observations of chorea during migraine support the notion that migraine is a form of arousal disorder, something located in the strange borderlands of sleep - a disorder which has its origin deep in the brainstem, and not superficially, in the cortical mantle, as is often supposed (a — Oliver Sacks

The secret to freestyling is working on the creation of thought and it being expressed from your cerebral cortex, to the air in your lungs, to your larynx, pharynx, to your tongue to form a word via whatever consonants and vowels you're working with as well as having a sense of style, cadence, and rhythm. — Myka 9

I am delighted that I have found a new reaction to demonstrate even to the blind the structure of the interstitial stroma of the cerebral cortex. I let the silver nitrate react with pieces of brain hardened in potassium dichromate. I have already obtained magnificent results and hope to do even better in the future. — Camillo Golgi

Judging by your face, the what-the-fuck nodes in your cerebral cortex must be a real light show. — Sam Lipsyte

Destiny is no more than the fulfillment of purposive potentialities within us. The human cerebral cortex is a single sheet composed of more neurons than there are stars in the known universe folded like a paper crane to fit in a quart-sized cubbyhole; there is enough potential energy in a single person that if released would equal thirty hydrogen bombs. Destiny is nothing to sneeze at! — Brian McGreevy

We are part of nature, a product of a long evolutionary journey. To some degree, we carry the ancient oceans in our blood. ... Our brains and nervous systems did not suddenly spring into existence without long antecedents in natural history. That which we most prize as integral to our humanity - our extraordinary capacity to think on complex conceptual levels - can be traced back to the nerve network of primitive invertebrates, the ganglia of a mollusk, the spinal cord of a fish, the brain of an amphibian, and the cerebral cortex of a primate. — Murray Bookchin

My space chums think my unique hookup with humanity could be evolution's awkward attempt to jump-start itself up again. They're thinking just maybe, going crazy could be the evolutionary process trying to hurry up mind expansion. Maybe my mind didn't snap. Maybe it was just trying to stretch itself into a new shape. The cerebral cortex trying to grow a thumb of sorts. — Lily Tomlin

My cerebral cortex, the gray matter that MIT neuroscientist Steven Pinker likens to 'a large sheet of two-dimensional tissue that has been wadded up to fit inside the spherical skull,' is riddled instead of whole. — Floyd Skloot

Let me tell you, though: being the smartest boy in the world wasn't easy. I didn't ask for this. I didn't want this. On the contrary, it was a huge burden. First, there was the task of keeping my brain perfectly protected. My cerebral cortex was a national treasure, a masterpiece of the Sistine Chapel of brains. This was not something that could be treated frivolously. If I could have locked it in a safe, I would have. Instead, I became obsessed with brain damage. — A. J. Jacobs

For all of the woes besetting our business, I believe with all my heart that newspapers - whether they are distributed to your doorstep, your laptop, your iPhone or a chip implanted in your cerebral cortex - will be around for a long time. — Bill Keller

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

The human race is just getting started ... The cerebral cortex is only a hundred thousand years old. It's still a baby, sucking teat and eating Cheerios. We might get better, maybe even wise, if we can last another thousand years. — Ellen Gilchrist

feel an emotion it is necessary but not sufficient that neural signals from viscera, from muscles and joints, and from neurotransmitter nuclei - all of which are activated during the process of emotion - reach certain subcortical nuclei and the cerebral cortex. Endocrine and other chemical signals also reach the central nervous system via the bloodstream among other routes. — Antonio R. Damasio

To have the experience I did as a child, I would have to be a physically different being, one with whom I share nearly nothing. On a cellular level, aside from the neurons of my cerebral cortex and a few other stranglers in my heart and eyes, I am not him. — Thomm Quackenbush

We, through the cerebral cortex, add the consciousness, spirit and rationality, to this dolphin brained human body avatar. We control our destiny and this body can become a servant of our conscious will, once we learn to communicate fully with it. We are called to bridge the gap between our conscious mind and the subconscious mind. — Kevin Michel

Our primate ancestors was the development of a larger cerebral cortex as well as the development of increased volume of gray-matter tissue in certain regions of the brain.32 This change occurred, however, on the very slow timescale of biological evolution and still involves an inherent — Ray Kurzweil

A tinge of panic tingled his cerebral cortex as he recalled the last greeting he had had in this country, which was not so welcoming. — Kenneth Eade

There is no other species on Earth that does science. It is, so far, entirely a human invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it works. It is not perfect. It can be misused. It is only a tool. But it is by far the best tool we have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything. — Carl Sagan

There is no future in it, Will Henry," he said pensively. "The future belongs to science. The fate of our species will be determined by the likes of Edison and Tesla, not Wordsworth or Whitman. The poets will lie upon the shores of Babylon and weep, poisoned by the fruit that grows from the ground where the Muses' corpses rot. The poets' voices will be drowned out by the gears of progress. I foresee the day when all sentiment is reduced to a chemical equation in our brains - hope, faith, even love - their exact locations pinned down and mapped out, so we may point to it and say, 'Here, in this region of our cerebral cortex, lies the soul.' — Rick Yancey

What distinguishes our species is thought. The cerebral cortex is in a way a liberation. We need no longer be trapped in the genetically inherited behavior patterns of lizards and baboons: territoriality and aggression and dominance hierarchies. We are each of us largely responsible for what gets put in to our brains. For what as adults we wind up caring for and knowing about. No longer at the mercy of the reptile brain we can change ourselves. Think of the possibilities. — Carl Sagan

That baby sees the world with completeness that you and I will never know again. His doors of perception have not yet been closed. He still experiences the moment he lives in. The inevitable bullshit hasn't constipated his cerebral cortex yet. He still sees the world as it really is, while we sit here, left with only a dim historical version of it manufactured for us by words and official bullshit, and so forth and so on.. — Tom Wolfe

Everybody goes into different dimensional planes. You do it every night when you dream. You are journeying into other dimensional planes. Dreams are not just functions of the cerebral cortex. — Frederick Lenz

Richard stood transfixed for a moment or two, wiped his forehead again, and gently replaced the phone as if it were an injured hamster. His brain began to buzz gently and suck its thumb. Lots of little synapses deep inside his cerebral cortex all joined hands and started dancing around and singing nursery rhymes. — Douglas Adams

For the first time in longer than I can remember, I feel peaceful. Not happy. Not sad. Not anxious. Not horny. Just all the higher parts of my brain closing up shop. The cerebral cortex. The cerebellum. That's where my problem is. I'm now simplifying myself. Somewhere balanced in the perfect middle between happiness and sadness. Because sponges never have a bad day. — Chuck Palahniuk

The brain does much more than recollect. It compares, synthesizes, analyzes, generates abstractions. We must figure out much more than our genes can know. That is why the brain library is some ten thousand times larger than the gene library. Our passion for learning, evident in the behaviour of every toddler, is the tool for our survival. Emotions and ritualized behaviour patterns are built deeply into us. They are part of our humanity. But they are not characteristically human. Many other animals have feelings. What distinguishes our species is thought. The cerebral cortex is a liberation. We need no longer be trapped in the genetically inherited behaviour patterns of lizards and baboons. We are, each of us, largerly responsible for what gets put into our brains, for what, as adults, we wind up caring for and knowing about. No longer at the mercy of the reptile brain, we can change ourselves. — Carl Sagan