American - Writer | -
Medieval alchemists, despite their lust for gold, considered mercury the most potent and poetic substance in the universe. As a child, I would have agreed with them.
Sam Kean
ChildGoldUniverseLustPotent
In a vague way, I always knew neurosurgery was different - more delicate, more difficult, more demanding. After all, we say things like, 'I'm no brain surgeon,' for a reason.
BrainSayWayMoreDifficultReason
Brains, you see, vary a lot from person to person - they vary as much as faces do.
YouPersonSeeBrainsFacesMuch
X-rays revealed that some people were born without a corpus callosum, and they seemed just fine.
PeopleBornSome PeopleWithoutFine
No one knows quite the reason, but surgically severing the corpus callosum can reduce the rate and intensity of seizures. So in the early 1960s, a few patients with severe epilepsy had their corpus callosums cut, turning them into split-brain people.
PeopleEarlyReasonCutIntensity
The brain, which is plastic when young, must be exposed to certain sights early in life, or it will remain blind to those sights forever.
LifeBrainBlindEarlyYoungWill
The idea of critical windows extends beyond just vision, of course: almost every system in the brain has a critical window when it needs to experience certain stimuli, or it won't get wired up properly. The most obvious example is language: if you don't learn a language early on, it's nigh impossible to become truly fluent.
VisionExperienceWindowBrainLearn
Animal vision - including human vision - is so biased toward movement that we don't technically see stationary objects at all.
VisionAnimalHumanMovementSee
The amygdala plays a crucial role in processing fear, and minus her two amygdalae, S.M. became unflappable. Studies of her are actually a hoot to read, since they basically consist of scientists concocting ever-more-elaborate ways of trying to scare her.
FearTryingTwoHerRoleRead
The amygdala is one of those brain structures that a lot of people know a little bit about, and there's a definite tendency to conflate the amygdala and the fear response itself - as if the amygdala, and the amygdala alone, 'causes' fear.
FearAlonePeopleBrainKnowLittle
The amygdala is indeed crucial for monitoring our environment and deciding what's worth getting worked up over. Once the amygdala determines this, however, it merely trips another circuit to actually produce the panic.
EnvironmentWorthOverUpPanicOur
Most people, even most doctors, learn that the placenta is a nice, tight seal that prevents anything in the mother's body from invading the fetus, and vice-versa. That's mostly true. But the placenta doesn't seal off the baby perfectly, and every so often, something slips across.
MotherPeopleBabyLearnBodyNice
Copyright © 2024 QuotesDict Sam Kean quotes