The real functional "machinery" of the brain, for Edelman, consists of millions of neuronal groups, organized into larger units or "maps". These maps, continually conversing in everchanging, unimaginably complex, but always meaningful patterns, may change in minutes or seconds. One is reminded of C. S. Sherrington's poetic evocation of the brain as "an enchanted loom", where "millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding one; a shifting harmony of subpatterns". Oliver Sacks
Some Similar Quotes
  1. Learn to deal with the fact that you are not a perfect person but you are a person that deserves respect and honesty. - Pandora Poikilos

  2. My brain tells me it will be better to just let him go. My heart... not so much. - Simone Elkeles

  3. Biology gives you a brain. Life turns it into a mind. - Jeffrey Eugenides

  4. This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness. - Dalai Lama Xiv

  5. Rabbit's clever, " said Pooh thoughtfully." Yes, " said Piglet, "Rabbit's clever."" And he has Brain.""Yes, " said Piglet, "Rabbit has Brain."There was a long silence." I suppose, " said Pooh, "that that's why he never understands anything. - A.a. Milne

More Quotes By Oliver Sacks
  1. To live on a day-to-day basis is insufficient for human beings; we need to transcend, transport, escape; we need meaning, understanding, and explanation; we need to see over-all patterns in our lives. We need hope, the sense of a future. And we need freedom (or,...

  2. In examining disease, we gain wisdom about anatomy and physiology and biology. In examining the person with disease, we gain wisdom about life.

  3. Given her deafness, the auditory part of the brain, deprived of its usual input, had started to generate a spontaneous activity of its own, and this took the form of musical hallucinations, mostly musical memories from her earlier life. The brain needed to stay incessantly...

  4. But the saddest difference between them was that Zazetsky, as Luria said, 'fought to regain his lost faculties with the indomitable tenacity of the damned, ' whereas Dr P. was not fighting, did not know what was lost. But who was more tragic, or who...

  5. There are, of course, inherent tendencies to repetition in music itself. Our poetry, our ballads, our songs are full of repetition; nursery rhymes and the little chants and songs we use to teach young children have choruses and refrains. We are attracted to repetition, even...

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