Date: April 25, 2011

"Like a racing engine, her mental clock went faster the hotter it got."

— Bilger, Burkhard

Date: April 25, 2011

"The most recent neuroscience papers make the brain sound like a Victorian attic, full of odd, vaguely labelled objects ticking away in every corner."

— Bilger, Burkhard

Date: April 25, 2011

"At U.C.L.A., Dean Buonomano believes that areas throughout the brain function as clocks, their tissue ticking with neural networks that change in predictable patterns. 'Imagine a skyscraper at night,' he told me. 'Some people on the top floor work till midnight, while some on the lower floors ma...

— Bilger, Burkhard

Date: April 25, 2011

"The brain, he writes, is like Kublai Khan, the great Mongol emperor of the thirteenth century. It sits enthroned in its skull, 'encased in darkness and silence,' at a lofty remove from brute reality. Messengers stream in from every corner of the sensory kingdom, bringing word of distant sights, ...

— Bilger, Burkhard

Date: April 25, 2011

"'I knew I had some intellectual horsepower,' he says. 'But I didn't know where my tires would catch purchase.'"

— Bilger, Burkhard

Date: October 14, 2011

"To its detractors, the brain is a kludge, a hacked-up device beset with bugs, biases and self-­deceptions that undermine our decision making and well-being at every turn."

— Charbris, Christopher F. (b. 1966)

Date: October 14, 2011

"Lately, a growing army of Chicken Littles retorts that this very plasticity has been hijacked by the Internet and other forms of technological crack that are rewiring our brains into a state of continual distraction and intellectual torpor."

— Charbris, Christopher F. (b. 1966)

Date: October 14, 2011

"So if you find yourself stopping every 30 seconds to check your Twitter feed, your brain has no more been rewired than if you find yourself taking a break for ice cream rather than celery. Picking the more rewarding stimulus is something our brains can do perfectly well with the wiring they star...

— Charbris, Christopher F. (b. 1966)

Date: October 14, 2011

"So what’s the right way to think about the brain? Like a piece of software stuck in permanent beta, it has its share of bugs, but its plasticity allows for frequent updates."

— Charbris, Christopher F. (b. 1966)

Date: November 2011

"I had been a hero-worshiper of his since being zapped by his writing, the closest my brain has come to hosting a meteor shower."

— Wolcott, James (b. 1952)