The adage that fact is stranger than fiction seems to be especially true for the workings of the brain. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran More Quotes by Vilayanur S. Ramachandran More Quotes From Vilayanur S. Ramachandran There are 100 billion neurons in the adult human brain, and each neuron makes something like 1,000 to 10,000 contacts with other neurons in the brain. Based on this, people have calculated that the number of permutations and combinations of brain activity exceeds the number of elementary particles in the universe. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran brain numbers people There is no real independent self, aloof from other human beings, inspecting the world, inspecting other people. You are, in fact, connected not just via Facebook and Internet, you're actually quite literally connected by your neurons. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran motivation inspiration real Here is this three-pound mass of jelly you can hold in the palm of your hand, and it can contemplate the vastness of interstellar space. It can contemplate the meaning of infinity and it can contemplate itself contemplating on the meaning of infinity. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran space brain hands Curiosity illuminates the correct path to anything in life. If you're not curious, that's when your brain is starting to die. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran curiosity path brain Indeed, the line between perceiving and hallucinating is not as crisp as we like to think. In a sense, when we look at the world, we are hallucinating all the time. One could almost regard perception as the act of choosing the one hallucination that best fits the incoming data. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran data perception thinking Your conscious life is an elaborate after-the-fact rationalization of things you really do for other reasons. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran life-is reason facts Even though its common knowledge these days, it never ceases to amaze me that all the richness of our mental life - all our feelings, our emotions, our thoughts, our ambitions, our love life, our religious sentiments and even what each of us regards us his own intimate private self - is simply the activity of these little specks of jelly in your head, in your brain. There is nothing else. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran love-life ambition religious A culture without mythology is not really a civilisation. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran mythology civilisation culture What the artist tries to do (either consciously or unconsciously) is to not only capture the essence of something but also to amplify it in order to more powerfully activate the same neural mechanisms that would be activated by the original object. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran essence order art We are not angels, we are merely sophisticated apes. Yet we feel like angels trapped inside the bodies of beasts, craving transcendence and all the time trying to spread our wings and fly off, and it's really a very odd predicament to be in, if you think about it. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran angel wings thinking What do we mean by "knowledge" or "understanding"? And how do billions of neurons achieve them? These are complete mysteries. Admittedly, cognitive neuroscientists are still very vague about the exact meaning of words like "understand," "think," and indeed the word "meaning" itself. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran understanding mean thinking People often ask how I got interested in the brain; my rhetorical answer is: 'How can anyone NOT be interested in it?' Everything you call 'human nature' and consciousness arises from it. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran answers brain people People think of art and science as being fundamentally opposed to each other, because art is about celebrating individual human creativity, and science is about discovering general principles, not about individual people. But in fact, the two have a lot in common, and the creative spirit is similar in both. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran creativity art thinking The brain abhors discrepancies. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran discrepancies brain Self-awareness is a trait that not only makes us human but also paradoxically makes us want to be more than merely human. As I said in my BBC Reith Lectures, “Science tells us we are merely beasts, but we don’t feel like that. We feel like angels trapped inside the bodies of beasts, forever craving transcendence Vilayanur S. Ramachandran angel self forever In the fetus, or a really young child, all the different brain areas are connected to each other, diffusely. And as the brain develops, the excess connections are turned off, so you get very specialized areas. So most people have really specialized talents. What happens in creative people is this pooling doesn't take place. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran creative children people The visual system of the brain has the organization, computational profile, and architecture it has in order to facilitate the organism's thriving at the four Fs: feeding fleeing, fighting, and reproduction. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran fighting organization order Remember that politics, colonialism, imperialism and war also originate in the human brain. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran colonialism brain war Science is like a love affair with nature; an elusive, tantalising mistress. It has all the turbulence, twists and turns of romantic love, but thats part of the game. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran romantic-love games happiness If you're a thinking person, the liver is interesting, but nothing is more intriguing than the brain. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran brain interesting thinking
