Complete this quote: “One of the difficulties in understanding the brain is that…”
Posted by Paul Mason on October 31, 2009
How would you complete the following quote:
“One of the difficulties in understanding the brain is that…”
This week’s quote is inspired by Richard L. Gregory, from his 1966 book, Eye and Brain: The Psychology of Seeing, which was translated into 12 different languages I believe.
Last week’s quote was inspired by Francis Crick: “There is no scientific study more vital to man than…”
Our first Complete this quote was inspired by Dr Seuss: “You have brains in your head, you have…”
Thank you to everyone who has been writing in. Your responses have been amusing, quirky and insightful!!!
We at neuroanthropology.net look forward to reading more!
Over to you, leave a reply below with a word/phrase to finish:
How would you complete the following quote:
“One of the difficulties in understanding the brain is that…”
Daniel D said
“… it’s a little tricky to take your own out to experiment on…”
“… there are two types, and knowledge of the workings of one precludes knowledge of the working of the other. A little like how the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything and the Question itself are mutually exclusive in any one universe…”
“… when you open someone’s skull and poke it, you always have to have one eye not on what you’re doing to avoid getting kicked…”
“… when you are looking at one, it is too easy to get absorbed in finding the way out of the maze…”
“… the damn thing is smart enough to realise what you are doing, and contrary enough to change the way it reacts just to spite you…”
“… each one you meet is wired just a little differently…”
meika said
you have to use you brain to do so.
Janis said
SO FEW OF US SEEM TO HAVE ONE.
anon1 said
-”… it is a terrible mess.”
or maybe :
- “… once you have dissected it, it doesn’t work anymore.”
Janis said
I know quite a few people for whom dissecting their brains won’t impair its normal function in a noticeable way.
Most of them seem licensed to drive.
FD said
“…it’s not a computer”
nosloc36 said
actual tools for observation and methods used for the decoding of information are not enough accurate in saying how neural mechanisms correlates to behavior. there’s also another factor related to the difficulty of studying the brain and the mind,and that is about the observation process during data measurements, done by an individual that possesses a brain also, so it’s kind of difficult to find a way to think about how to study yourself and the way your brain’s biology combined with the experiences that have shape your thoughts interactively with culture, could provide a method which its origin is the same as the object that studies
Alex said
…you can only know what it’s like to have one.
dlende said
it makes for such pretty pictures these days
Ifeanyi said
… it is probably not a functionally reducible organ and therefore we as humans can’t model it modularly which means we lack the prerequisite working memory capacity to grasp the mechanism by which gazillions of independent variables deliver its emergent properties.
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Cynthia said
…as a fortune cookie I got once said, “If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn’t”.