If you ever feel lazy or dull, take heart: you're the busiest, brightest thing on the planet.

It is the most wondrous thing we have discovered in the universe, and it is us.

I know one lab that studies nicotine receptors and all the scientists are smokers, and another lab that studies impulse control and they're all overweight.

I call myself a Possibilian: I'm open to...ideas that we don't have any way of testing right now.

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.

Many people prefer a view of human nature that includes a true side and a false side - in other words, humans have a single genuine aim and the rest is decoration, evasion, or cover-up. That's intuitive, but it's incomplete. A study of the brain necessitates a more nuanced view of human nature.

All activity in the brain is driven by other activity in the brain, in a vastly complex, interconnected network.