When we have any function, whether it's language or vision or cognitive functions like memory, we aren't dealing with a straight line to the brain that says 'This is what I do.' The brain builds a network of connections, a network of neurons that have a particular role in that function.
Interpretation
The brain processes functions through interconnected networks rather than direct pathways.
In her quote, Maryanne Wolf emphasizes that cognitive functions, such as language and memory, are not handled by straightforward connections in the brain. Instead, they involve complex networks of neurons working together, highlighting the intricate nature of how our brains function and process information.
In practice
This quote can be used in a neuroscience lecture to illustrate how brain functions are interconnected.
Digital technology can be a great resource, but it can also be a pernicious one, so it's how we, as a society, really study the cognitive impact of that and use evidence-based research to go after the technology designers to do a better job of dealing with the problems of memory and attention we are seeing.
In reading, we are both scientists and poets.
The acquisition of literacy is one of the most important epigenetic achievements of Homo sapiens. To our knowledge, no other species ever acquired it.
The quality of our reading is not only an index of the quality of our thought; it is our best-known route to developing whole new pathways in the cerebral evolution of our species.
There's a richness that reading gives you, an opportunity to probe more than any other medium I know of. Reading is about not being content with the surface.
The attention span of children may be one of the main reasons why an immersion in on-screen reading is so engaging, and it may also be why digital reading may ultimately prove antithetical to the long-in-development, reflective nature of the expert reading brain as we know it.
I thought scientists were going to find out exactly how everything worked, and then make it work better. I fully expected that by the time I was twenty-one, some scientist, maybe my brother, would have taken a color photograph of God Almighty—and sold it to Popular Mechanics magazine. Scientific truth was going to make us so happy and comfortable. What actually happened when I was twenty-one was that we dropped scientific truth on Hiroshima.
Discover the force of the skies O Men: once recognised it can be put to use.
The scientific spirit is of more value than its products, and irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.
What you see is that the most outstanding feature of life's history is a constant domination by bacteria.
If you equate the probability of the birth of a bacteria cell to chance assembly of its atoms, eternity will not suffice to produce one Faced with the enormous sum of lucky draws behind the success of the evolutionary game, one may legitimately wonder to what extent this success is actually written into the fabric of the universe.
Scientists study the world as it is, engineers create the world that never has been.
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