InspiringQuotes

Michael Merzenich Quotes:

Michael Merzenich quotes

Ocupation: Professor

Life: b. 1942

famous quotes

The patterns of activity of neurons in sensory areas can be altered by patterns of attention. Experience coupled with attention leads to physical changes in the structure and future functioning of the nervous system. This leaves us with a clear physiological fact…moment by moment we choose and sculpt how our ever-changing minds will work. We choose who we will be in the next moment in a very real sense, and these choices are left embossed in physical form in our material selves.

Topics: Real, Self, Choices, Physiological

Rather marvelously, the older brain only permits change when it judges that change to be important, rewarding or good for it.

source: - "The Fantastic Plastic Brain". The Kavli Foundation interview, www.kavlifoundation.org. July 2012.

Topics: Judging, Brain, Important

The Internet is just one of those things that contemporary humans can spend millions of 'practice' events at, that the average human a thousand years ago had absolutely no exposure to. Our brains are massively remodeled by this exposure-but so, too, by reading, by television, by video games, by modern electronics, by contemporary music, by contemporary 'tools,' etc.

source: - "Are we getting smarter or dumber?". Interview with Stefanie Olsen, www.cnet.com. September 21, 2005.

Topics: Reading, Average, Years, Contemporary Music

To learn is to change how you think.

Topics: Thinking

If a brain is exercised properly, anyone can grow intelligence, at any age, and potentially by a lot. Or you can just let your brain idle - and watch it slowly, inexorably, go to seed like a sedentary body.

Topics: Brain, Age, Body, Sedentary

Your brain - every brain - is a work in progress. It is 'plastic.' From the day we're born to the day we die, it continuously revises and remodels, improving or slowly declining, as a function of how we use it.

Topics: Brain, Progress, Use

Learning a new skill can change hundreds of millions of cortical connections.

Topics: Skills, Connections, New Skills

My mantra: Brainless exercise is a lost opportunity for improvement.

Topics: Exercise, Opportunity, Improvement, Mantras, Lost Opportunity

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