Our Ability To Perceive The World Around

The Minute You Succumb To Outside Pressure, You Cease To Be Creative.

Even Though Its Common Knowledge These Days, It Never Ceases To Amaze Me That All The Richness Of Our Mental Life - All Our Feelings, Our Emotions, Our Thoughts, Our Ambitions, Our Love Life, Our Religious Sentiments And Even What Each Of Us Regards Us His Own Intimate Private Self - Is Simply The Activity Of These Little Specks Of Jelly In Your Head, In Your Brain. There Is Nothing Else.

In Fact, On One Occasion, A Rather Pedantic Experimental Psychologist Was Telling Him About A Long, Complicated Experiment He Had Done, Incorporating All The Proper Controls And Using Considerable Technical Virtuosity. When He Saw Crick's Exasperated Expression He Said, "but Dr. Crick, We Have Got It Right - We Know It's Right," Crick's Response Was, "the Point Is Not Whether It's Right. The Point Is: Does It Even Matter Whether Its Right Or Wrong?"

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.

People Often Ask How I Got Interested In The Brain; My Rhetorical Answer Is: 'how Can Anyone Not Be Interested In It?' Everything You Call 'human Nature' And Consciousness Arises From It.