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

There are three deaths. The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.

My lab and academic work fill my day from about 9 am to 7 p.m. Then I zoom out the lens to work on my other writing.

When people fall in love, there´s period of up to three years during which the zeal and infatuation ride at a peak. The internal signals in the body and breain are literally a love drug. And then it beginds to decline. From this perspective, we are preprogramed to lose interest in a sexual partner after the time required to raise a child has passed - which is, on average, about 4 years.

We are not conscious of most things until we ask ourselves questions about them.

Given the billions of neurons, this means there are as many connections in a single cubic centimeter of brain tissue as there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

It turns out that dopamine is a chemical on double duty in the brain. Along with its role in motor commands, it also serves as the main messenger in the reward systems, guiding a person toward food, drink, mates, and all things useful for survival. Because of its role in the reward system, imbalances in dopamine can trigger gambling, overeating, and drug addiction - behaviors that result from a reward system gone awry.