Paul Allen Quotes

The brain is the cornerstone of virtually every facet of our lives. I wish we knew more.

All our behaviours are a result of neurophysiological activity in the brain. There is no reason to believe there is any magic going on.

Dream sleep provides a fascinating neurochemical soothing balm. It is during dream sleep and only during dream sleep when our brain shuts off a stress-related neurochemical called noradrenalin.

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.

I read a lot of nonfiction - especially books about the brain.

I'm so interested in the brain. I read true crime.

I decided, as a medical student, to devote myself to a study of the brain.

Genetics is crude, but neuroscience goes directly to work on the brain, and the mind follows.

There is no such thing as a disembodied mind. The mind is implanted in the brain, and the brain is implanted in the body.

Initially, I thought problems on how the brain works to be the most interesting. But it was necessary to be practical and concentrate on less obscure matters when I entered Washington State College. Besides, there were no courses given in neurobiology.

The adage that fact is stranger than fiction seems to be especially true for the workings of the brain.

When scientists get old, they get interested in the brain, and I'm a little bit afraid I'm falling into that.

The brain is an immensely complex organ, and many mysteries remain. Exactly how brain and mind or soma and psyche are related is one of them.

In school, I studied psychology, linguistics, neuroscience. I understand that there is a real lack of respect for the brain.

The brain is hugely complicated, and because it is so complicated, it requires multidisciplinary research.

I had always wanted to become a neurologist, which is one of the most demanding vocations in medicine. Where do you stop, after all, with the brain? How does it function? What are its limits? The work seems unending.

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

To find better means of fixing the brain, we first need to achieve something more fundamental. We must understand how it works.

I think we're all fascinated and a little mystified by how the brain works. One of the most mysterious of the physical sciences is neurological science.

You, your joys and sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and your free will are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.

I find the function of the brain incredibly fascinating, and it's like trying to crack the toughest, most complicated problem there is.

As someone who was basically a software engineer for many years, I became fascinated with how the brain functions and is put together and works in such a different fashion than computers do.

The thing you realize when you get into studying neuroscience, even a little bit, is that everything is connected to everything else. So it's as if the brain is trying to use everything at its disposal - what it is seeing, what it is hearing, what is the temperature, past experience.

Much of what we now consider 'personality' will be explained away as structural and chemical functions of the brain.

As an ex-programmer, I'm still just curious about how the brain functions, how that flow of information really happens.