ALPHABETICAL BRAIN™ VOCABULARY QUOTATIONS ABOUT CONSCIOUSNESS August 23, 2019 THE WELL-TUNED BRAIN: Neuroscience and the Life Well Lived by Peter C. Whybrow. W.W. Norton, 2015 (i-xiv, 380 pages) QUOTATIONS ABOUT CONSCIOUSNESS "Tuning the brain demands knowledge, attention, and hard work. However, there is no investment more worthwhile: striving to be in tune with one's self simultaneously makes common sense and serves the common good." (15) "The nurturing of the 'well-tuned brain offers harmony and hope --- to each of us as individuals and to our collective enterprise." (15) Regarding "How the brain makes choices: I outline from the perspective of behavioral neuroscience how the fundamental free-market operating 'principles' of reward, punishment, and the evaluation of risk are reflected in the information-processing mechanisms of the brain." (11) "It is through such brain mechanisms that we perceive the world, arrive at decisions, and take action, learning from the results of those actions to refine future behavior. This activity mirrors what is essentially the brain's own 'internal market,' seeking to find balance through continuous interaction with a complex, ever-changing world." (11) "Obesity is merely the most visible of a cascade of health consequences that flow from the stress-inducing, demand driven, and time-urgent economic environment that we have created for ourselves." (34) "In tying together the threads of evidence that I have identified ... it becomes clear that the antecedents of America's obesity epidemic and its associated disabilities are best understood as an interconnected whole, one within which evolutionary, biological, and cultural elements are interwoven. From the standpoint of public health planning, this is of critical importance." (34) "Physiologically, these stress-induced disabilities reflect a dangerous disruption of the homoeostatic disruption --- of the bodily harmony --- essential for healthy living." (34) "The specific brain chemistry is important in understanding how habits are acquired... Dopamine is the molecule of motivation, influencing learning --- and the development of habit --- through the reinforcement of reward and punishment." (34) "When something is perceived and experienced as rewarding and pleasurable, either consciously or preconsciously, we seek to repeat the experience, and during such moments dopamine neurons in the striatum increase their rate of firing." (59) "Conversely, when action is met with punishment or pain, or even familiarity and boredom, the striatal dopamine activity diminishes. (59-60) This is the brain's tuning system at work." (59-60) instantly return to: QUOTATIONS ABOUT CONSCIOUSNESS or instantly return to: WEBSITE INDEX produced by Infinite Interactive Ideas™