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How do we regulate our emotions? The answer is surprisingly simple: by thinking about them. The prefrontal cortex allows each of us to contemplate his or her own mind, a talent psychologists call metacognition. We know when we are angry; every emotional state comes with self-awareness attached, so that an individual can try to figure out why he's feeling what he's feeling. If the particular feeling makes no sense–if the amygdala is simply responding to a loss frame, for example–then it can be discounted. The prefrontal cortex can deliberately choose to ignore the emotional brain.Jonah Lehrer
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A few years ago, Tor Wager, a neuroscientist at Columbia University, wanted to figure out why placebos were so effective. His experiment was brutally straightforward: he gave college students electric shocks while they were stuck in an f M R I machine. (The subjects were well compensated, at least by undergraduate standards.)Jonah Lehrer
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...new ideas are merely several old thoughts that occur at the exact same time.Jonah Lehrer