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.

The ability to double our biomass - not by waiting several million years and growing to be the size of an elephant - but waiting a few hundred thousand years for neurons to sprout into our brains - ones capable of having us create emotional relationships with other members of our species. We thereby double our biomass not by getting bigger, but by creating an ally.

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 more senses recruited at the moment of learning, the more likely you are to recall it later.

Every brain is wired differently from every other brain, and learns in ways unique to that wiring.

Empathy works so well because it does not require a solution. It requires only understanding.

The brain cannot multitask. Multitasking, when it comes to paying attention, is a myth. The brain naturally focuses on concepts sequentially, one at a time…To put it bluntly, research shows that we can’t multitask. We are biologically incapable of processing information-rich inputs simultaneously…Studies show that a person who is interrupted takes 50 percent longer to accomplish a task. Not only that, he or she makes up to 50 percent more errors.