Norman Cousins Quotes

The human body is amazing," she said. If you deprive it of one sensory input, the other senses take over, almost instantly.

In the traditionally taught view of perception, data from the sensorium pours into the brain, works its way up the sensory hierarchy, and makes itself seen, heard, smelled, tasted, felt - "perceived." But a closer examination of the data suggests this is incorrect. The brain is properly thought of as a mostly closed system that runs on its own internally generated activity.

We think of our eyes as video cameras and our brains as blank tapes to be filled with sensory inputs.

Sensation is not the conduction of a quality or state of external bodies to consciousness, but the conduction of a quality or state of our nerves to consciousness, excited by an external cause.

When you look at the brain regions associated with picking up data from the body, a huge amount of the brain is devoted to picking up information from the lips and tongue.

The mental act of sensation which issues in reflex movement is so simple as to defy analysis.

It turns out our brain is sensitive, maybe too sensitive, to motion. It's a survival mechanism.

He who feels compelled to consider the consequences of these facts cannot but realize that the specific sensibility of nerves for certain impressions is not enough, since all nerves are sensitive to the same cause but react to the same cause in different ways.

Bodies do not produce sensations, but complexes of elements (complexes of sensations) make up bodies.

The senses are the organs by which man places himself in connexion with exterior objects.

A sense is what has the power of receiving into itself the sensible forms of things without the matter, in the way in which a piece of wax takes on the impress of a signet-ring without the iron or gold.

Our brain is mapping the world. Often that map is distorted, but it's a map with constant immediate sensory input.

It is the brain, not the heart or lungs, that is the critical organ.

We become in part what our senses take in.

The brain is the citadel of sense perception.

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.

The senses are a kind of reason. Taste, touch and smell, hearing and seeing, are not merely a means to sensation, enjoyable or otherwise, but they are also a means to knowledge - and are, indeed, your only actual means to knowledge.

The sensory world is the school, without which the human being would never come to the spirit.

Our bodies like rhythm and our brains like melody and harmony.

The brain is the highest of the organs in position, and it is protected by the vault of the head; it has no flesh or blood or refuse. It is the citadel of sense-perception.

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.

What the brain does by itself is infinitely more fascinating and complex than any response it can make to chemical stimulation.

It seems that the brain always has to be active, and if the auditory parts of the brain are not getting sufficient input, then they may start to create hallucinatory sounds on their own. Although it is curious that they do not usually create noises or voices; they create music.

Wherefore the brain must be looked upon as the universal and general sensory and at the same time as the universal and general motory organ of the body and finally as the universal and general laboratory of the animal spirits and the blood or of the essential juices of life.

- My instructors in science and technology have taught us about how the brain works. It's full of electrical impulses. It's like a computer. If you stimulate one part of the brain with an electrode, it... - They know nothing.