How do we regulate our emotions? The answer is surprisingly simple: by thinking about them. The prefrontal cortex allows each of us to contemplate his or her own mind, a talent psychologists call metacognition. We know when we are angry; every emotional state comes with self-awareness attached, so that an individual can try to figure out why he's feeling what he's feeling. If the particular feeling makes no sense—if the amygdala is simply responding to a loss frame, for example—then it can be discounted. The prefrontal cortex can deliberately choose to ignore the emotional brain.

While human nature largely determines how we hear the notes, it is nurture that lets us hear the music.

I want to give people theories, I want to expose them to scientific stories that force them to re-evaluate the way they use these three pounds of meat inside their head.

Harlow would later write, "If monkeys have taught us anything, it's that you've got to learn how to love before you learn how to live.

Just because an idea is true doesn't mean it can be proved. And just because an idea can be proved doesn't mean it's true.

Creativity is a spark. It can be excruciating when we're rubbing two rocks together and getting nothing. And it can be intensely satisfying when the flame catches and a new idea sweeps around the world.

Every creative story is different. And every creative story is the same. There was nothing. Now there is something. It's almost like magic.