Date: February 25, 2010

"There is no longer much debate over whether evolution sculptured the fleshy machine inside our head."

— Lehrer, Jonah

Date: February 25, 2010

"Their evolutionary perspective, however — they see the mind as a fine-tuned machine that is not prone to pointless programming bugs — led them to wonder if rumination had a purpose."

— Lehrer, Jonah

Date: February 25, 2010

"That’s because rumination is largely rooted in working memory, a kind of mental scratchpad that allows us to 'work' with all the information stuck in consciousness."

— Lehrer, Jonah

Date: February 25, 2010

"This suggests that depressive disorder is an extreme form of an ordinary thought process, part of the dismal machinery that draws us toward our problems, like a magnet to metal."

— Lehrer, Jonah