Top 121 Neurons Quotes & Sayings

In the human mind, the number of possible connections that can be made between neurons greatly exceeds the number of atoms in the universe.

We know a certain amount about neurons. You can do fMRI and watch parts of the brain light up. But what happens in the middle is poorly understood.

Mirror neurons make human empathy possible.

Whatever we call it - mind, character, soul - we like to think we possess something that is greater than the sum of our neurons and that animates us.

We started all this research way back in the early 1990s, developing a technique that allows us to record the electrical signals produced by neurons simultaneously.

The well-being of a neuron depends on its ability to communicate with other neurons. Studies have shown that electrical and chemical stimulation from both a neuron's inputs and its targets support vital cellular processes. Neurons unable to connect effectively with other neurons atrophy. Useless, an abandoned neuron will die.

Neurons that fire together wire together. You can rewire your brain for higher consciousness by focusing on love.

You’re nothing but a pack of neurons.

A book can change the world... Every book a child reads creates new neurons in that child's brain.

Even while it's true that we are tied to our molecules and proteins and neurons - as strokes and hormones and drugs and microorganisms indisputably tell us - it does not logically follow that humans are best described only as pieces and parts.

Neurons that fire together wire together.

Even then, more than a year earlier, there were neurons in her head, not far from her ears, that were being strangled to death, too quietly for her to hear them. Some would argue that things were going so insiduously wrong that the neurons themselves initiated events that would lead to their own destruction. Whether it was molecular murder or cellular suicide, they were unable to warn her of what was happening before they died.

The brain immediately confronts us with its great complexity. The human brain weighs only three to four pounds but contains about 100 billion neurons.

Just like the brain consists of billions of highly connected neurons, a basic operating unit in a neural network is a neuron-like node. It takes input from other nodes and sends output to others.

The ideal way to study the property of different types of neurons is to control individual types of cells independently and see what happens when you alter one type of cell. Optogenetics helps to realize this goal.

If you pass a lot of data through a teeny network, like 20 neurons, it'll do what it can, but it's not going to be very good.

The brain is a monstrous, beautiful mess. Its billions of nerve cells - called neurons - lie in a tangled web that displays cognitive powers far exceeding any of the silicon machines we have built to mimic it.

Essentially, all expressions of human nature ever produced, from a caveman's paintings to Mozart's symphonies and Einstein's view of the universe, emerge from the same source: the relentless dynamic toil of large populations of interconnected neurons.

If stem cells divide equally, so both daughter cells look more or less the same, each one becomes another stem cell. If the split is unequal, neurons form prematurely.

Go pump some neurons. Expand your craniums

In the brain, you have connections between the neurons called synapses, and they can change. All your knowledge is stored in those synapses.

I once did a radio program with a famous materialist, that is to say a scientist who believed that absolutely everything was physical and that all emotions were reductive to little electrical impulses in your neurons. And I found that I didn't believe that. But what the emotions really are, I don't have an alternative theory.

[N]o scientist likes to be criticized. ... But you don't reply to critics: "Wait a minute, wait a minute; this is a really good idea. I'm very fond of it. It's done you no harm. Please don't attack it." That's not the way it goes. The hard but just rule is that if the ideas don't work, you must throw them away. Don't waste any neurons on what doesn't work. Devote those neurons to new ideas that better explain the data. Valid criticism is doing you a favor.

A typical neuron makes about ten thousand connections to neighboring neurons. Given the billions of neurons, this means there are as many connections in a single cubic centimeter of brain tissue as there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

There are 100 billion neurons in the adult human brain, and each neuron makes something like 1,000 to 10,000 contacts with other neurons in the brain. Based on this, people have calculated that the number of permutations and combinations of brain activity exceeds the number of elementary particles in the universe.

Unlike the heart or kidney, which have a small, defined set of cell types, we still do not have a taxonomy of neurons, and neuroscientists still argue whether specific types of neurons are unique to humans. But there is no disputing that neurons are only about 10 percent of the cells in the human brain.

With its billions of interconnected neurons, whose interactions change from millisecond to millisecond, the human brain is an archetypal complex system.

The fact that three-fifths of an octopus' neurons are not in their brain, but in their arms, suggests that each arm has a mind of its own.

Love is indeed, at root, the product of the firings of neurons and release of hormones.

Perhaps eggs are like neurons, which also are not replenished in adulthood: they know too much. Eggs must plan the party. Sperm need only to show up- wearing top hat and tails, of course.

We assume that we have free will and that we make decisions, but we don't. Neurons do. We decide that this sum total driving us is a decision we have made for ourselves. But it is not.

Given the billions of neurons, this means there are as many connections in a single cubic centimeter of brain tissue as there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

If you meet somebody and are attracted to someone, and the exquisite neurons in your brain and her brain intermesh properly, then things can be wonderful. It's not like homework. You don't have to work at the relationship.

If you start responding to every stimulus, then you end up as a nerve gas case, quite literally. Neurons fire at once.

Your brain has a trillion neurons and every neuron has ten thousand little dendrites. The system of inter-communication is awe-inspiring.

What N.Y.C. does attract, year in and year out, is the very best general talent from around the world. The absolute smartest, neurons-just-fire-faster, can-bend-spoons-with-their-mind talent.

Your brain is built of cells called neurons and glia - hundreds of billions of them. Each one of these cells is as complicated as a city.

Mimicking the intricacies of the human brain, a neuro-inspired computer would work in a fashion similar to the way neurons and synapses communicate. It could potentially learn or develop memory.

Neurons are living cells with a metabolism. And they need glucose in order to function. Glucose is the fuel of the brain, just like gasoline is the fuel of your car.

The cells and fibers of the brain must carry some kind of individual identification tags, presumably cytochemical in nature, by which they are distinguished one from another almost, in many regions, to the level of the single neurons.

The neural code usually refers to how your current thoughts and feelings and perceptions are encoded in the signals that neurons are passing around - and it's not the same. The code is not the same for every person.

Consciousness is somehow a by-product of the simultaneous, high frequency firing of neurons in different parts of the brain. It's the meshing of these frequencies that generates consciousness, just as tones from individual instruments produce the rich, complex, & seamless sounds of a symphony orchestra

The entire universe - for one thing - only exists in your perceptions. That's all you're gonna see of it. To all practical intents and purposes this is purely some kind of lightshow that's being put on in the kind of neurons in our brain. The whole of reality.

Most of the different types of cells in our body die and are replaced every few weeks or months. However, neurons, the primary cell of the nervous system, do not multiply (for the most part) after we are born. That means that the majority of the neurons in your brain today are as old as you are. This longevity of the neurons partially accounts for why we feel pretty much the same on the inside at the age of 10 as we do at age 30 or 77.

The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10 thousand other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe.

The circadian neurons are one of the few circuits in neurobiology where we have a chance to understand at multiple levels how different sets of neurons communicate with each other - including understanding the wiring rules, the biochemical rules, and the functional behavioral rules.

Artificial intelligence is growing up fast, as are robots whose facial expressions can elicit empathy and make your mirror neurons quiver.

Space and time, not proteins and neurons, hold the answer to the problem of consciousness. When we consider the nerve impulses entering the brain, we realize that they are not woven together automatically, any more than the information is inside a computer.

An illustration I use to get people to understand it is this: I'll ask major corporate audiences: Why don't you just take all your traditional beliefs about organizations, and apply them to the neurons in your brain?

Love is indeed at root the product of the firings of neurons and release of hormones.

Studies by many labs have already started to identify specific circuits of neurons involved in normal cognitive function like memory and learning, as well as disease processes such as Parkinson's disease, depression, and autism.

The identification of a population of olfactory sensory neurons innervating a single glomerulus that mediates robust avoidance to a naturally occurring odorant provides insight in the neural circuitry that underlies this innate behavior.

The number of neurons in the brain is very much larger than the number of components in a computer.

Synaptic summation is the technical term used in neurophysiology for those instances in which some neuron C is fired only by a combination of neurons A and B.

Scientists tracking mirror neurons noticed that a monkey will get excited not just when holding a banana, but also when seeing someone else holding a banana.

There are billions of neurons in our brains, but what are neurons? Just cells. The brain has no knowledge until connections are made between neurons. All that we know, all that we are, comes from the way our neurons are connected.

We are all now connected by the Internet, like neurons in a giant brain.

In the brain, you have connections between the neurons called synapses, and they can change. All your knowledge is stored in those synapses. You have about 1,000-trillion synapses - 10 to the 15, it's a very big number.

Sleep is a regenerative process where we heal and where our neurons build strong connections. It's like a fountain of youth that we dive into every night.

Just as the mind emerges from the actions of individual neurons and their cooperation, the success of an organization emerges not only from its individual participants, but also from the interplay between them.