David Eagleman - Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain (2011)

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If choices and decisions derive from hidden mental processes, then free choice is either an illusion or, at minimum, more tightly constrained than previously considered.

David Eagleman
This is what consciousness does: it sets the goals, and the rest of the system learns how to meet them.

David Eagleman
Even though the outside world has not changed, your brain dynamically presents different interpretations.

David Eagleman
All life is no more than a match struck in the dark and blown out again.

David Eagleman
As we develop better technologies for probing the brain, we detect more problems.

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.

David Eagleman
Modern neuroimaging is like asking an astronaut in the space shuttle to look out the window and judge how America is doing.

David Eagleman
Many people prefer a view of human nature that includes a true side and a false side - in other words, humans have a single genuine aim and the rest is decoration, evasion, or cover-up. That's intuitive, but it's incomplete. A study of the brain necessitates a more nuanced view of human nature.

David Eagleman
Once you begin deliberating about where your fingers are jumping on the piano keyboard, you can no longer pull off the piece.

David Eagleman
The three-pound organ in your skull - with its pink consistency of Jell-o - is an alien kind of computational material. It is composed of miniaturized, self-configuring parts, and it vastly outstrips anything we've dreamt of building.

David Eagleman
In our current understanding of science, we can't find the physical gap in which to slip free will - the uncaused causer - because there seems to be no part of the machinery that does not follow in a causal relationship from the other parts.

David Eagleman
As Carl Jung put it, "In each of us there is another whom we do not know." As Pink Floyd sang, "There's someone in my head, but it's not me."

David Eagleman
One of the most pervasive mistakes is to believe that our visual system gives a faithful representation of what is "out there" in the same way that a movie camera would.

David Eagleman
It turns out that dopamine is a chemical on double duty in the brain. Along with its role in motor commands, it also serves as the main messenger in the reward systems, guiding a person toward food, drink, mates, and all things useful for survival. Because of its role in the reward system, imbalances in dopamine can trigger gambling, overeating, and drug addiction - behaviors that result from a reward system gone awry.

David Eagleman
If you have certain problems with your brain but are raised in a good home, you might turn out okay. If your brain is fine and your home is terrible, you might still turn out fine. But if you have mild brain damage and end up with a bad home life, you're tossing the dice for a very unlucky synergy.

David Eagleman
The drives you take for granted ("I'm a hetero/homosexual," "I'm attracted to children/adults," "I'm aggressive/not aggressive," and so on) depend on the intricate details of your neural machinery.

David Eagleman
Think about the brain as the densest concentration of youness. It's the peak of the mountain, but not the whole mountain.

David Eagleman
If you ever feel lazy or dull, take heart: you're the busiest, brightest thing on the planet.

David Eagleman
When a male vole repeatedly mates with a female, a hormone called vasopressin is released in his brain. The vasopressin binds to receptors in a part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens, and the binding mediates a pleasurable feeling that becomes associated with that female. This locks in the monogamy, which is known as pair-bonding. If you block this hormone, the pair-bonding goes away.

David Eagleman
We are not the ones driving the boat of our behavior, at least not nearly as much as we believe.

David Eagleman
This is the hallmark of a robust biological system: political parties can perish in a tragic accident and the society will still run, sometimes with little more than a hiccup to the system. It may be that for every strange clinical case in which brain damage leads to a bizarre change in behavior or perception, there are hundreds of cases in which parts of the brain are damaged with no detectable clinical sign.

David Eagleman
Awareness of your surroundings occurs only when sensory inputs violate expectations. When the world is successfully predicted away, awareness is not needed because the brain is doing its job well.

David Eagleman
None of the individual metal hunks of an airplane have the property of flight, but when they are attached together in the right way, the result takes to the air. A thin metal bar won't do you much good if you're trying to control a jaguar, but several of them in parallel have the property of containment. The concept of emergent properties means that something new can be introduced that is not inherent in any of the parts.

David Eagleman
We are not at the center of ourselves, but instead - like the Earth in the Milky Way, and the Milky Way in the universe - far out on a distant edge, hearing little of what is transpiring.

David Eagleman
You gleefully say, "I 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.

David Eagleman
The main thing known about secrets is that keeping them is unhealthy for the brain.

David Eagleman
Nothing is inherently tasty or repulsive - it depends on your needs. Deliciousness is simply an index of usefulness.

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

David Eagleman
The brain internally simulates what will happen if you were to perform some action under specific conditions. Internal models not only play a role in motor acts (such as catching or dodging) but also underlie conscious perception.

David Eagleman
You are part of a complex social network that changes your biology with every interaction, and which your actions can change.

David Eagleman