David Eagleman

The deep secret of the brain is that not only the spinal cord but the entire central nervous system works this way: internally generated activity is modulated by sensory input. In this view, the difference between being awake and being asleep is merely that the data coming in from the eyes anchors the perception. Asleep vision (dreaming) is perception that is not tied down to anything in the real world; waking perception is something like dreaming with a little more commitment to what´s in front of you. Other examples of unanchored perception are found in prisoners in pitch-park solitary confinement, or in people in sensory deprivation chambers. Both of these situations quickly lead to hallucinations.

Each of us is on our own trajectory _ steered by our genes and our experiences _ and as a result every brain has a different internal life. Brains are as unique as snowflakes.

Instead of reality being passively recorded by the brain, it is actively constructed by it.

There's someone in my head, but it's not me."Pink FloydDavid Eagleman

As Carl Jung put it, __n each of us there is another whom we do not know._ As Pink Floyd sang, __here__ someone in my head, but it__ not me.

Death... The moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.

Societies would _not_ be better off if everyone were like Mr Spock, all rationality and no emotion. Instead, a balance - a teaming up of the internal rivals - is optimal for brains. ... Some balance of the emotional and rational systems is needed, and that balance may already be optimized by natural selection in human brains.

All creation necessarily ends in this: Creators, powerless, fleeing from the things they have wrought.

Since we live in the heads of those who remember us, we lose control of our lives and become who they want us to be.

When you arrive in the afterlife, you find that Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley sits on a throne. She is cared for and protected by a covey of angels. After some questioning, you find out that God's favorite book is Shelley's Frankenstein. He sits up at night with a worn copy of the book clutched in his mighty hands, alternately reading the book and staring reflectively at the night sky.

Because vision appears so effortless, we are like fish challenged to understand water.

You gleefully say, __ just thought of something!_, when in fact your brain performed an enormous amount of work before your moment of genius struck. When an idea is served up from behind the scenes, your neural circuitry has been working on it for hours or days or years, consolidating information and trying out new combinations. But you take credit without further wonderment at the vast, hidden machinery behind the scenes.

Evolve solutions; when you find a good one, don't stop.

Everything that creates itself upon the backs of smaller scales will by those same scales be consumed.

If you ever feel lazy or dull, take heart: you__e the busiest, brightest thing on the planet.