Synthesize new ideas constantly. Never read passively. Annotate, model, think, and synthesize while you read, even when you're reading what you conceive to be introductory stuff. That way, you will always aim towards understanding things at a resolution fine enough for you to be creative.

I think the definition will change as we learn more, but my working definition of solving the brain is: one, we can model, maybe in a computer, the processes that generate things like thoughts and feelings, and two, we can understand how to cure brain disorders, like Alzheimer's and epilepsy. Those are my two driving goals. One is more human-condition oriented, and one more clinical.

Maybe we'll understand more about how the universe came to be, and what forces drove it in the early days and which forces drive it now.

A lot of good ideas are actually bad ideas because, since they sound good, everybody's already doing them.

It's not even known how many kinds of cells there are in the brain. If you were looking for a periodic table of the brain, there is no such thing. I really like to think of the brain as a computer.

We don't have a "consciousness meter" that'll tell us exactly how conscious something is. I think we might get there eventually.

The skill-providers want to have more impact and solve problems; the problem people want new tools to get their problems solved.