Most brain scientists have not taught 4th grade, and don't know very much about the classroom, even though they might study learning in some detail. Most education professionals, who often know a tremendous amount about the classroom, don't know much about the brain. That is one of the reasons why I am so skeptical about applying brain findings to the classroom.

Our ability to adapt came from our East African birthplace, a meteorologically unstable place. If you couldn't adapt, you'd be dead. But once you've found a solution, there is no need to continue the adaptive behavioral parrying, which is bioenergetically very expensive to maintain. We are built to find answers, then hang on to them as long as we can.

Whether at work, home or school, everybody carries their brain around them, and if the organ suffers from a disorder, we carry the disorder around with us too.

A factory worker at an assembly line, who can learn their job in 5 minutes, can get bored fairly easily, and disengage completely.

I have great confidence in human curiosity - even though I don't know what curiosity is from a biological point of view. One of its characteristics has got to be the willingness to explore.

The distance between a gene and a behavior is of greatest interest to me. The relative contributions of nature and nurture, of nucleotide and nuclear family, are perpetually fascinating to me.

Women tend to recall the details of an emotionally competent stimulus, using more of their left hemisphere to do the processing. Men tend to recall the gist aspects of an emotionally competent stimulus, using more of their right hemisphere to do the processing.