Babies learn through a series of increasingly self-corrected ideas. They use very sophisticated hypothesis testing strategies to find out about their world.

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.

To improve short-term memory significantly, reduce the stress in your life. And choose your parents wisely.

Change often involves loss, so change can be a risky experience.

Years of research show us that the less control a person feels over an aversive stimuli coming at them, the more likely they are to disengage. Complete loss of control over a sustained period of time can actually lead to depression. It then follows that giving the person a level of control over the situation reduce the stress - and perhaps restore the disengagement.

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.

Not even identical twins can have the exact same experiences, and their brains are not wired the same way.