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.

A third or more of the brain is devoted to visual processing, not true of any other sense. We have color vision and it is truly binocular. This sophistication is not true of other senses, such as smell, where many genes are actually mutated and no longer work.

If you are curious, you won't be satisfied with the "tyranny of custom." People stuck in that rut might say "why?" and the first thing an exploratory person would say is "why not?"

Human learning is a very aggressive style in its native state. I am not sure why, though it is a very useful trait in an unstable, unpredictable living environment.

Any education system that only memorizes things creates robots and will never produce Nobel laureates. Any education system that only emphasizes improvisation will get a bunch of people who may think they are creative, but they are functionally illiterate.

What you do and learn in life physically changes what your brain looks like—it literally rewires it.

The brain remembers the emotional component of an experience better than any other aspect.