I think the most incredible fact about the brain is that it is the only piece of biological real estate that can actually study itself. I can think about that for decades - I have, actually - and still be in drop dead amazement.

The brain appears to have been designed to solve problems related to surviving in an outdoor setting, in unstable meteorological conditions, and to do so in near constant motion.

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

One of the greatest predictors of academic success that exist is the emotional stability of the home. So if parents are interested in education reform, they should also be interested in how they conduct themselves in front of their children. If they are homeschooling their kids, they are even more exposed, so the idea is even more important.

To put it bluntly, research shows that we can’t multitask. We are biologically incapable of processing attention-rich inputs simultaneously.

Don't start with the details. Start with the key ideas, and in a hierarchical fashion, form the details around these larger notions.

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.