American - Scientist | December 27, 1957 -
There's an ancient connection between movement and music. Most languages don't make a distinction between the words 'music' and 'dance.' And we can see that in the brain. When people are lying perfectly still but listening to music, the neurons in the motor cortex are firing.
Daniel Levitin
MusicDanceWordsPeopleBrainSee
What music is better able to do than language is to represent the complexity of human emotional states.
MusicLanguageBetterHumanAble
I became a cognitive psychologist because I met a bunch of teachers I really liked.
TeachersBecauseCognitiveMetLiked
I don't think I'm always right, but I would like to empower people to come to sound conclusions using a systematic way of looking at things.
PeopleLookingThinkWayEmpower
Having learned something, we tend to cling to that belief, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. New information comes in all time, and the thing we ought to be thinking about doing is changing our beliefs as that new information comes in.
TimeFaceThinkingDoingInformation
We need to take a step back and realize that not everything we encounter is true. You don't want to be gullibly accepting everything as true, but you don't want to be cynically rejecting everything as false. You want to take your time to evaluate the information.
TimeStepYouInformationBackTrue
I have never seen a proton or electron spinning around it. I have never actually seen a chromosome. I trust that they exist because people who I trust tell me they do.
TrustPeopleMeNeverSpinningTell
President Trump, when challenged on facts, says that many people feel the way he does. But feelings should not take the place of reason in matters of public policy.
PeopleFactsFeelFeelingsPlace
If we are to appropriate money for roads, we need statistics on how bad our roads really are and, moreover, where more roads will be beneficial - it would be irresponsible to just build them where our gut tells us to.
MoneyRoadsBadStatisticsBuildUs
The left brain is responsible for making order out of chaos, for making sense of things in the world that don't always add up. To do this, it often makes up stories, fantastic confabulations in some cases, just to be able to explain what we're experiencing.
BrainChaosWorldResponsibleOut
Maybe instead of asking political candidates to submit tax returns, we really should be asking to see their brain scans.
BrainPoliticalTaxSeeAsking
Music can be thought of as a type of perceptual illusion in which our brain imposes structure and order on a sequence of sounds. Just how this structure leads us to experience emotional reactions is part of the mystery of music.
MusicExperienceBrainThoughtOrder
Copyright © 2024 QuotesDict Daniel Levitin quotes