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)

Date: November 2011

"The warp drive in my brain clicked, and I remember looking up from the magazine 10 or 15 minutes later and staring through the library window to the sun-bright parking lot of the supermarket across the way, as if checking to make sure everything was still where it had been the last time I looked."

— Wolcott, James (b. 1952)

Date: March 11, 2011

"The huge submerged bulk of the mental iceberg, with its stores of memory and acquired skills that have become automatic, like language, driving and etiquette, supplies people with the raw materials on which they can exercise their reason and decide what to think and what to do."

— Nagel, Thomas (b. 1937)

Date: October 31, 2011

"Scientists now know that the brain runs largely on autopilot; it acts first and asks questions later, often explaining behavior after the fact."

— Carey, Benedict (b. 1960)

Date: October 31, 2011

"And then there were the experiments, each one a snapshot into the dark box of the brain."

— Carey, Benedict (b. 1960)

Date: October 31, 2011

"In short, the brain sustains a sense of unity not just in the presence of its left and right co-pilots."

— Carey, Benedict (b. 1960)

Date: October 31, 2011

"It does so amid a cacophony of competing voices, the neural equivalent of open outcry at the Chicago Board of Trade."

— Carey, Benedict (b. 1960)

Date: October 31, 2011

"The brain’s cacophony of competing voices feels coherent because some module or network somewhere in the left hemisphere is providing a running narration."

— Carey, Benedict (b. 1960)

Date: October 31, 2011

"The interpreter [the left-brain narrating system] creates the illusion of a meaningful script, as well as a coherent self."

— Carey, Benedict (b. 1960)