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Portrait of David Eagleman

David Eagleman

(1971) Neuroscientist United States

183 quotes in 868 categories

David Eagleman explains that we live on a thin slice of perception, missing most of what actually happens around us. He notes that the visual cortex builds a model of the world, that we only become aware of things when we ask questions, and that love can surge for up to three years.

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David Eagleman is a neuroscientist from the United States, best known for Sum.

Quick Facts About David Eagleman

Born: April 25, 1971
Nationality: United States
Profession: Neuroscientist
Notable works: Sum

About David Eagleman

David Eagleman is an American neuroscientist, bestselling author and science communicator who teaches at Stanford University. He has founded several neurotech startups and directs the nonprofit Center for Science and Law, which aims to align the legal system with modern neuroscience. His research focuses on brain plasticity, time perception, synesthesia and the emerging field of neurolaw.

Awards & Honors

Guggenheim Fellowship

Quotes by David Eagleman

I always bounce my legs when I'm sitting.

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There are always wonderful mysteries to confront.

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The brain runs its show incognito.

Brain

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Deliciousness is only an index of usefulness.

Index

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Evolve solutions; when you find a good one, don't stop.

Change

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Vision is more than looking.

Dreams

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“Her birimizin içinde, tanımadığımız biri daha vardır.”

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Our reality depends on what our biology is up to.

Biology

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What we find is that our brains have colossal things happening in them all the time.

Brain

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Instead of reality being passively recorded by the brain, it is actively constructed by it.

Brain

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If you ever feel lazy or dull, take heart: you're the busiest, brightest thing on the planet.

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Neuroscience over the next 50 years is going to introduce things that are mind-blowing.

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What a life in science really teaches you is the vastness of our ignorance.

Ignorance

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I call myself a Possibilian: I'm open to...ideas that we don't have any way of testing right now.

Faith

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Humans have discovered that they cannot stop Death, but at least they can spit in his drink.

Death

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This is what consciousness does: it sets the goals, and the rest of the system learns how to meet them.

Consciousness

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One of the most impressive features of brains - and especially human brains - is the flexibility to learn almost any kind…

Brain

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I spent my adult life as a scientist, and science is, essentially, the most successful approach we have to try and understand…

Adult life

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“We are astoundingly poor observers. And our introspection is useless on these issues: we believe we’re seeing the world just fine until…

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“You might assume that you end at the border of your skin, but there’s a sense in which there’s no way to…

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Awareness of your surroundings occurs only when sensory inputs violate expectations. When the world is successfully predicted away, awareness is not needed…

Awareness

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The conscious mind is not at the center of the action in the brain; instead, it is far out on a distant…

Action

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A mere 400 years after our fall from the center of the universe, we have experienced the fall from the center of ourselves.

Center of the universe

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“The first thing we learn from studying our own circuitry is a simple lesson: most of what we do and think and…

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“We are astoundingly poor observers. And our introspection is useless on these issues: we believe we´re seeing the world just fine until…

Introspection

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“And once again the Rewarder and the Punisher stalk off, struggling to understand why knowing the code behind the wine does not…

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The brain internally simulates what will happen if you were to perform some action under specific conditions. Internal models not only play…

Action

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If you have certain problems with your brain but are raised in a good home, you might turn out okay. If your…

Brain

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“Because self-control requires energy, which means we have less energy available for the next thing we need to do. And that’s why…

Discipline

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Societies would _not_ be better off if everyone were like Mr Spock, all rationality and no emotion. Instead, a balance - a…

Balance

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At least 15 percent of human females possess a genetic mutation that gives them an extra (fourth) type of color photoreceptor -…

Color

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When the brain activity is kindled in the right spot, people hear voices. If a physician prescribes an anti-epileptic medication, the seizures…

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“We are made up of an entire parliament of pieces and parts and subsystems. Beyond a collection of local expert systems, we…

Action

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“Let’s zoom in on a particular form of synesthesia as an example. For most of us, February and Wednesday do not have…

Days of the week

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We open our eyes and we think we're seeing the whole world out there. But what has become clear—and really just in…

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“The deep secret of the brain is that not only the spinal cord but the entire central nervous system works this way:…

Brain

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As Walt Whitman correctly surmised, we are large and we harbor multitudes within us. And those multitudes are locked in chronic battle.…

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If an epileptic seizure is focused in a particular sweet spot in the temporal lobe, a person won´t have motor seizures, but…

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“Imagine for a moment that we are nothing but the product of billions of years of molecules coming together and ratcheting up…

Coming together

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“Recently, evolutionary psychologist have turned their sights on love and divorce. It didn´t take long to notice that when people fall in…

Fall in love

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David Eagleman by topic

Brain (52) Time (14) Psychology (13) Life (12) World (11) Science (11) Humans (11) Philosophy of Mind (10) Reality (10) Mind (10)