Leonard Mlodinow Quotes

There is zero correlation between IQ and emotional empathy... They're controlled by different parts of the brain.

We will move from looking at correlations between brain activity and behaviour to studying how the brain causes mental states and behaviour.

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

Now, we used to think the brain was like a computer. But now, we realize that's not true. There's no programming of the brain. There's no Windows. And we think the brain is more like a large corporation. Because think of the unconscious mind. In a corporation, you have subdivisions which operate independently of the main office.

Many cognitive psychologists see the brain as a computer. But every single brain is absolutely individual, both in its development and in the way it encounters the world.

Every aspect of our lives plays out in two versions: one conscious, which we are constantly aware of, and the other unconscious, which remains hidden from us.

We are not interested in the fact that the brain has the consistency of cold porridge.

I was interested in the nature of human mental processes, which is what got me interested in psychoanalysis. And it became clear to me after a while that mental processes come from the brain, and in order to understand them, you need to be a biologist of the brain.

One of the things I've come to appreciate about the brain is the importance of location. It's not just a set of interchangeable parts that you can swap in and out.

Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain, our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain; awake but one, and in, what myriads rise!

The knowledge that there is a part of the psychic functions that are out of conscious reach, we did not need to wait for Freud to know this!

It's useful to think of the imagination as an aspect of the body because it seems to have processes of its own that are obscure to us.

The conscious mind determines the actions, the unconscious mind determines the reactions; and the reactions are just as important as the actions.

Some scholars argue that although the brain might contain neural subsystems, or modules, specialized for tasks like recognizing faces and understanding language, it also contains a part that constitutes a person, a self: the chief executive of all the subsystems.

The reason I'm not a neurobiologist but a cognitive psychologist is that I think looking at brain tissue is often the wrong level of analysis. You have to look at a higher level of organization.

All our behaviours are a result of neurophysiological activity in the brain.

The brain is not a bag of traits. It's startlingly complex. There are few or no single genes with a consistent effect on the mind.

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.

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

I'm quite interested in my own mental processes, simply because I'm a failed scientist, and because I'm interested in how the brain and the mind works, and I like to avoid easy descriptions.

The brain has this amazing level of almost fractal complexity to it. When you start looking at any part of it in detail, you realize that it's much more complex than you thought.

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.

As a programmer, you're working with very simple structures compared to the brain. So I was always fascinated by how the brain works.