Date: January 11, 2014

"How, then, does its waste — like beta-amyloid, a protein associated with Alzheimer’s disease — get cleared? What happens to all the wrappers and leftovers that litter the room after any mental workout?"

— Konnikova, Maria (b. 1984)

Date: January 11, 2014

"'Think about a fish tank,' says Dr. Nedergaard. 'If you have a tank and no filter, the fish will eventually die. So, how do the brain cells get rid of their waste? Where is their filter?'"

— Konnikova, Maria (b. 1984)

Date: January 11, 2014

"If the main function of sleep is to take out our neural trash, that insight could eventually enable a new understanding of both neurodegenerative diseases and regular, age-related cognitive decline."

— Konnikova, Maria (b. 1984)

Date: January 11, 2014

"One day, scientists might be able to successfully mimic the expansion of the interstitial space that does the mental janitorial work so that we can achieve maximally efficient round-the-clock brain trash pickup."

— Konnikova, Maria (b. 1984)

Date: January 11, 2014

"It's [concerning sleep loss] like the difference between a snowstorm's disrupting a single day of trash pickup and a prolonged strike. No longer quite as easy to fix, and even when the strike is over, there's likely to be some stray debris floating around for quite some time yet."

— Konnikova, Maria (b. 1984)

Date: March 19, 2015

"When students are tackling a task like that, you can feel the whirr and hum of thought: it feels woven of reciprocity, willing, ambition, the impulse to translate fugitive thoughts into communication with others."

— Warner, Marina (b. 1946)

Date: June 6, 2015

"I eventually wiped away my rotted thought, which suited my face as poorly as bad lighting, and we resumed our session."

— Filipacchi, Amanda (b. October 10, 1967)

Date: 2015

"She knew Lee well, and by heading southeast, she had hidden in the folds of his own cerebral cortex."

— Zink, Nell (b. 1964)

Date: 2015

"The mind of a child! Children have no hearts (cf. Peter Pan, another story Meg could reproduce fairly accurately), and their minds are rickety towers of surreal detritus."

— Zink, Nell (b. 1964)

Date: 2015

"'Yes, our brains are like Swiss cheese,' he added, sort of undermining his compliment after the fact."

— Zink, Nell (b. 1964)