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.
We have to understand the ubiquity of energy in everything we do. Energy is core to our economy and it brings with it environmental challenges, and it's core to our security challenges.
Mathematics is a more powerful instrument of knowledge than any other that has been bequeathed to us by human agency.
Burning carbon-based substances like oil, gas, and especially coal, produces billions of tons of extra carbon dioxide each year. Methane gas from cows and pigs and other animals on our large farms ends up in the atmosphere as well, trapping more of the sun's energy as heat.
By venturing into space, we improve life for everyone here on Earth - scientific advances and innovations that come from this kind of research create products we use in our daily lives.
String theory has the potential to show that all of the wondrous happenings in the universe - from the frantic dance of subatomic quarks to the stately waltz of orbiting binary stars; from the primordial fireball of the big bang to the majestic swirl of heavenly galaxies - are reflections of one, grand physical principle, one master equation.
The true laboratory is the mind, where behind illusions we uncover the laws of truth.
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