Barbara Kingsolver Quotes

Most people (by the time they have become adults ) can't change their minds because their neural pathways have become set... the longer neural pathways have been running one way the harder it is to rewire them.

Our brains have the ability to reorganize themselves by forming new neural connections throughout our lives. This ability is called neuroplasticity.

Neuroplasticity research showed that the brain changes its very structure with each different activity it performs, perfecting its circuits so it is better suited to the task at hand.

When we talk about the brain, it is anything but unidimensional or simplistic or reductionistic.

Experiences shape the brain, but the brain shapes the way we view experiences, too.

There is this mythology that says that when people are born, their brains are essentially fixed very early on and they're not able to change their connections. I was aware that was a myth and that people could learn new skills.

Your brain forms roughly 10,000 new cells every day, but unless they hook up to preexisting cells with strong memories, they die. Serves them right.

The brain is constantly adapting.

There's an old rule in neuroscience that does not alter with age: use it or lose it. It is a very hopeful principle when applied to critical thought in the reading brain because it implies choice.

The brain is plastic its whole life span.

There are no genes or areas in the brain devoted uniquely to reading. Rather, our ability to read represents our brain's protean capacity to learn something outside our repertoire by creating new circuits that connect existing circuits in a different way.

Research indicates that, as long as we keep using our brains in an active way, we continue to build neural pathways as we get older. This gives us not only the ongoing potential for creative thought, but also an additional incentive for continuing to stretch ourselves.

The principal activities of brains are making changes in themselves.

Your brain does not manufacture thoughts. Your thoughts shape neural networks.

believe that you've had most of your important memories by the time you're thirty. After that, memory becomes water overflowing into an already full cup. New experiences just don't register in the same way or with the same impact. I could be shooting heroin with the Princess of Wales, naked in a crashing jet, and the experience still couldn't compare to the time the cops chased us after we threw the Taylors' patio furniture into their pool in eleventh grade.

Self-awareness moves us beyond the old, well-worn pathways in the brain that support fixed, unconscious habits.

The brain has a quality referred to as plasticity. The ability to form new neural pathways even into very old age. The brain is fluid, flexible and incredibly adaptable to new experiences.

Behavior runs in deep channels that were cut during early childhood, and it is very difficult to alter them. In order to change a deeply ingrained pattern, you have to build a sturdy dam, dig another canal and reroute the river in the new direction. That effort is rarely successful over the long haul.

You can lead your brain and inspire it. You can actively shape new neural pathways.

Hardness of heart is a dreadful quality, but it is doubtful whether in the long run it works more damage than softness of head.

It's very difficult when you have learned something a certain way. Not only your mind absorbs it; your eyes also are trained to see in a certain way because eyes are only as good as you've been trained to see.

If little else, the brain is an educational toy. Why it may be a frustrating play thing - one whose finer points recede just when you think you are mastering them - it is nonetheless perpetually fascinating, frequently surprising, occasionally rewarding, and it comes already assembled. [...] Alas! the brain is a toy that plays games of its own. Its very most favorite game is the one-thing-leads-to-another game.

WE ARE ALL TRAPPED in our own way of thinking, trapped in our own way of relating to people. We get so used to seeing the world our way that we come to think that the world is the way we see it.

When you get new rules that work, you're changing the physiology of your brain. And then your brain has to reconfigure itself in order to deal with it.

I think the growth of the brain is a slow process. But you do change and the more you accept change and embrace change, the better.