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Our ability to perceive the world around us seems so effortless that we tend to take it for granted.

Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

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Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Age: 73
Born: 1951
Born: August 10
Academic
Neurologist
Pedagogue
Psychologist
Scientist
Writer
Rykove
V. S. Ramachandran
V S Ramachandran
Around
Seems
Take
World
Effortless
Perceive
Granted
Tend
Ability

More quotes by Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

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Your conscious life is an elaborate after-the-fact rationalization of things you really do for other reasons.
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Even today no computer can understand language as well as a three-year-old or see as well as a mouse.
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Yet as human beings we have to accept-with humility-that the question of ultimate origins will always remain with us, no matter how deeply we understand the brain and the cosmos that it creates.
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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.
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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.
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A genius is somebody who seemingly just reaches out of nowhere.
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What the neurology tells us is that the self consists of many components, and the notion of one unitary self may well be an illusion.
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The brain abhors discrepancies.
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Here is a neuron that fires when I reach and grab something, but it also fires when I watch Joe reaching and grabbing something. ... It's as though this neuron is adopting the other person's point of view.
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Remember that politics, colonialism, imperialism and war also originate in the human brain.
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In the fetus, or a really young child, all the different brain areas are connected to each other, diffusely. And as the brain develops, the excess connections are turned off, so you get very specialized areas. So most people have really specialized talents. What happens in creative people is this pooling doesn't take place.
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Lofty questions about the mind are fascinating to ask, philosophers have been asking them for three millennia both in India where I am from and here in the West - but it is only in the brain that we can eventually hope to find the answers.
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If we knew about the real facts and statistics of mortality, we’d be terrified.
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What the artist tries to do (either consciously or unconsciously) is to not only capture the essence of something but also to amplify it in order to more powerfully activate the same neural mechanisms that would be activated by the original object.
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The adage that fact is stranger than fiction seems to be especially true for the workings of the brain.
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Without ducking responsibility, what's wrong with medicine today is that it is predicated on providing treatment, not on reducing suffering. Not on solving problems.
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Self-awareness is a trait that not only makes us human but also paradoxically makes us want to be more than merely human. As I said in my BBC Reith Lectures, “Science tells us we are merely beasts, but we don’t feel like that. We feel like angels trapped inside the bodies of beasts, forever craving transcendence
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Great art allows you to transcend your mortal frame and to reach for the stars. I think great science does the same thing.
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A culture without mythology is not really a civilisation.
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What do we mean by knowledge or understanding? And how do billions of neurons achieve them? These are complete mysteries. Admittedly, cognitive neuroscientists are still very vague about the exact meaning of words like understand, think, and indeed the word meaning itself.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran