Miguel Nicolelis Quotes

The actual organization of behavior goes on the level of the individual nerve cells and their connections, and we have a hundred billion nerve cells, probably a hundred trillion connections. It's just mind-boggling to think of all the different ways in which they're arranged in a baby's head.

We have about 100 million cells interconnected in our brains. They communicate with one another through electrical signals.

Brain cells are normally not sensitive to light. So by introducing light-sensitive proteins into specific types of neurons, we can now selectively control that specific type of neuron by shining light in the brain.

It must be born in mind that one does not see directly - as is the case in the exploration of the surface of the brain - where the electrodes are attacking.

There is an adage in neuroscience that circuits that wire together fire together. By engaging the brain and spinal cord together, we may be able to enhancce teh growth of [brain] circuits during rehabilitation.

We see in the electroencephalogram a concomitant phenomenon of the continuous nerve processes which take place in the brain, exactly as the electrocardiogram represents a concomitant phenomenon of the contractions of the individual segments of the heart.

In the human mind, the number of possible connections that can be made between neurons greatly exceeds the number of atoms in the universe.

What does it mean, exactly, for a given system to be a 'neural correlate of consciousness'?

With its billions of interconnected neurons, whose interactions change from millisecond to millisecond, the human brain is an archetypal complex system.

We cannot experimentally map out the brain. It's just too big. In a piece of the brain the size of a pinhead there are 3,000 pathways like a city with 3,000 streets.

All evidence indicates that the neuron does not reset. The synapses do not reset. They are always different. They're changing every millisecond. Your brain today is very, very different from what it was when you were 10 years old, and yet you may have profound memories from when you were 10.

As the brain matures, one thing that happens is the pruning of the synapses. Synaptic pruning does not occur willy-nilly; it depends largely on how any one brain pathway is used.

A typical neuron makes about ten thousand connections to neighboring neurons. Given the billions of neurons, this means there are as many connections in a single cubic centimeter of brain tissue as there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

No machines will ever truly fully figure the brain out, because the brain's performance is constantly altered or else constrained by this inanimate, rogue artifact you can't control, namely, speech.

Physiology seeks to derive the processes in our own nervous system from general physical forces, without considering whether these processes are or are not accompanied by processes of consciousness.

A single neuron in the brain is an incredibly complex machine that even today we don't understand. A single 'neuron' in a neural network is an incredibly simple mathematical function that captures a minuscule fraction of the complexity of a biological neuron.

The cortex is the enemy.

In terms of the brain, you can in a crude way think of the human brain as a computer.

When we have any function, whether it's language or vision or cognitive functions like memory, we aren't dealing with a straight line to the brain that says 'This is what I do.' The brain builds a network of connections, a network of neurons that have a particular role in that function.

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

Your brain is built of cells called neurons and glia - hundreds of billions of them. Each one of these cells is as complicated as a city.

For the longest time, neuroscientists were forced to be passive observers of brain activity.

Exciting discoveries in neuroscience are allowing us to fit educational methods to new understandings of how the brain develops.

Exact information about the functional significance of the deep sections of the brain is only obtained by working through the brain histologically in serial section.

Life and consciousness are the two great mysteries. Actually, their substrates are the inanimate. And how do you get from neurons shooting around in the brain to the thought that pops up in your head and mine? There's something deeply mysterious about that. And if you're not struck by the mystery, I think you haven't thought about it.