Richard Restak > Quotes

“Our perceptions take on richness and depth as a result of all the things that we learn. The eye is not a camera that objectively takes a photo of the “world out there.” Rather, what the eye sees is determined by what the brain has learned. This suggests a short mantra: learn more, see more.”
― Richard Restak, Mozart's Brain and the Fighter Pilot: Unleashing Your Brain's Potential

“The more you learn about how your brain works, the better your chances of using it most efficiently, optimizing your intellectual capabilities, and accomplishing even more in life than many people who may score higher than you on standardized intelligence tests.”
― Richard Restak, Mozart's Brain and the Fighter Pilot: Unleashing Your Brain's Potential

“While it’s true that certain brain areas are specialized (such as the centers for processing sight, sound, touch, and other qualities and properties), the largest portion of the brain, the association cortex, is devoted to establishing networks and thereby linking everything together throughout the brain. As a result of this networking, you don’t separately see, hear, taste, smell, and feel your breakfast bagel— you experience it as a unity.”
― Richard Restak, Mozart's Brain and the Fighter Pilot: Unleashing Your Brain's Potential

“Do whatever you have to, to keep yourself reading.”
― Richard Restak, Complete Guide to Memory: The Science of Strengthening Your Mind

“Until the day we die our brain remains capable of change, according to the challenges that we set for it.”
― Richard Restak, Think Smart: a neuroscientist's prescription for improving your brain's performance

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought,” according to the Dhammapada.”
― Richard Restak, Mozart's Brain and the Fighter Pilot: Unleashing Your Brain's Potential

“In his book Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, emphasizes the importance of the brain in the forming of connections (the italics are mine): A piece of information is really defined only by what it’s related to, and how it’s related. There really is little else to meaning. The structure is everything. There are billions of neurons in our brains, but what are neurons? Just cells. The brain has no knowledge until connections are made between neurons. All that we know, all that we are, comes from the way our neurons are connected. Berners-Lee”
― Richard Restak, Mozart's Brain and the Fighter Pilot: Unleashing Your Brain's Potential

“No two individuals will form the same patterns because no two individuals possess identical brains or have undergone identical experiences.”
― Richard Restak, Mozart's Brain and the Fighter Pilot: Unleashing Your Brain's Potential

“Networking is a fundamental operating principle of the human brain. All knowledge within the brain is based on networking. Thus, any one piece of information can be potentially linked with any other. Indeed, creativity can be thought of as the formation of novel and original linkages. James Burke refers to this as the pinball effect. Rather than training ourselves in narrow specialties, suggests Burke, we should train ourselves “to think in a different way about knowledge and how it should be used.” Philosophers”
― Richard Restak, Mozart's Brain and the Fighter Pilot: Unleashing Your Brain's Potential

“Idi Amin wore reflective sunglasses so that his victims could only see their terrified expressions reflected back at them). Amin and the Mafia are associated with death, and their dark glasses or “shades” suggest the inhabitants of Hades. Used in the singular, a “shade” is a visor for shielding the eyes from strong light and, hence, a forerunner of “shades,” a colloquial term for sunglasses. But a shade is also a scientific apparatus or shutter for intercepting light passing through the camera that enabled the photographer to take the pictures”
― Richard Restak, Mozart's Brain and the Fighter Pilot: Unleashing Your Brain's Potential

“cognition refers to the ability of our brain to attend, identify, and act. More informally, cognition refers to our thoughts, moods, inclinations, decisions, and actions. Included among the components of cognition are alertness, concentration, perceptual speed, learning, memory, problem solving, creativity, and mental endurance. Each of these components of cognition has two things in common. First, each is dependent on how well our brain is functioning. Second, each can be improved by our own efforts. In short, we can make ourselves smarter by enhancing the components of cognition. This book will provide you with methods for enhancing cognition by improving your brain’s performance. Regular”
― Richard Restak, Mozart's Brain and the Fighter Pilot: Unleashing Your Brain's Potential

“Just as important as getting enough sleep is thinking about sleep in the right way. Stop thinking of sleep and naps as “downtime” or as a “waste of time.” Think of them as opportunities for memory consolidation and enhancing the brain circuits that help skill learning. Nor should you feel guilty about sleep. It’s just as crucial a part of successful brain work as the actual task itself.”
― Richard Restak, Think Smart: a neuroscientist's prescription for improving your brain's performance

“In computer terms, the cerebral cortex writes the software programs for actions and, after some practice on your part, the basal ganglia take over to run the programs that enable you to carry out the actions. When you learn the tango, for instance, you have to concentrate (i.e., use the cerebral cortex) to plan, learn, and get comfortable with the steps. But after some practice and experience, you’re eventually able to tango while thinking of other things because the basal ganglia are operating that system automatically. Toward”
― Richard Restak, Mozart's Brain and the Fighter Pilot: Unleashing Your Brain's Potential

“In America today, anyone over fifty lives in dread of the Big A—Alzheimer’s disease. Small social gatherings (dinner, cocktail parties, etc.) take on the atmosphere of a segment from NPR’s weekly quiz show “Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me.” That’s the one where guests vie with each other in intense competitions to be the first to come up with the names of such things as the actor playing a role in the latest mini-series everybody is binging on. Almost inevitably, someone will pull out a cellphone to check the accuracy of the person who responded first. Quick, quicker, quickest lest others suspect you of coming down with the initial symptoms of the Big A. Although Alzheimer’s disease is not nearly as common as many people fear, nevertheless worries about perceived memory lapses are increasingly expressed to friends. They are also the most common complaint that persons over fifty-five years of age bring to their doctors. Such memory concerns are often unjustified and arouse needless anxiety. This widespread anxiety has helped create a national pre-occupation with memory and signs of memory failure. One of the reasons for this panic is the confusion in many people’s minds about how we form memories.”
― Richard Restak, The Complete Guide to Memory: The Science of Strengthening Your Mind

“One can go even further and claim working memory is the system by which events become consciously experienced. So, memory is not only crucial to identity, but forms the basis for conscious experience. Please read that previous sentence again because it is one of the most important sentences in this book. Memory is not only crucial to identity, but forms the basis for conscious experience. So what could be a better reason for enhancing working memory?”
― Richard Restak, The Complete Guide to Memory: The Science of Strengthening Your Mind

“Neuroscience has shown that Carroll and Orwell were on to something. Brain scans suggest that every time we imagine a future possibility, we encode that imagined future into our memory. This involves the creation of a new memory, which when incorporated into the association network provides contact with the neuronal network formed during the creation of our earlier memories. The formation of the new memory is like an improv theater routine that varies in content according to time, cast, and circumstances. This variation is one of the reasons why people sharing the same experiences often remember events differently. It also goes a long way towards explaining why our memories—especially personal, emotionally nuanced memories—may sometimes be wrong.”
― Richard Restak, The Complete Guide to Memory: The Science of Strengthening Your Mind

“The MIND diet is another brain-oriented diet that is a bit more regimented than the Mediterranean diet: Each day you eat three servings of whole grains such as quinoa, barley, buckwheat, brown rice etc; a salad free of any fattening caloric dressing; and another vegetable accompanied, if you wish, by a glass of wine. Snacks consist of nuts with an added half cup of beans every other day. Twice a week you can eat poultry and a half-cup of berries. At least once a week broiled or baked fish should be eaten.”
― Richard Restak, The Complete Guide to Memory: The Science of Strengthening Your Mind

“Here is an overview and survey of what we have covered so far: Encoding is the basis for all voluntarily retrievable memory. Without encoding, recall is impossible. All encoding is initially episodic (something happening to you, an episode); if repeated often enough, the information in memory is transferred to semantic memory (general knowledge); or procedural memory (how to do something).”
― Richard Restak, The Complete Guide to Memory: The Science of Strengthening Your Mind

“people’s ability to make judgements across a range of stimuli is limited to about seven alternative states.”
― Richard Restak, The Complete Guide to Memory: The Science of Strengthening Your Mind

“COFFEE AND TEA Recent research suggests that both coffee and tea consumption are associated with a lower incidence of dementia. Particularly interesting is the finding that those who drink two or three cups of coffee and the same amount of tea showed the greatest reduction, according to the figures released in November 2021 by the UK Biobank. This study analyzed coffee and tea consumption as related to stroke and dementia risk. Among the 365,682 participants, those who drank two to three cups of coffee per day and two to three cups of tea per day lowered their dementia risk by 28 percent.”
― Richard Restak, The Complete Guide to Memory: The Science of Strengthening Your Mind

“Most important is working memory. Indeed, one could argue that “consciousness”
― Richard Restak, The Complete Guide to Memory: The Science of Strengthening Your Mind

“The easiest and most common way of memorizing involves coming up with a catchphrase involving all of the elements that you are trying to remember.”
― Richard Restak, The Complete Guide to Memory: The Science of Strengthening Your Mind

“Incidentally, I have noticed over my years as a neurologist and neuropsychiatrist that people with early dementia, as one of the first signs of the encroaching illness, often stop reading fiction. They can no longer keep the characters or plot development “in mind” (in their working memory). A second early sign of incipient dementia (while we are on the subject) relates to cooking. Unable to retain and employ working memory, the sufferer can no longer follow a recipe. Especially hard are measuring the ingredients and timing their entry into the meal being prepared. Bottom line: keep reading and cooking as spurs to maintaining your working memory.”
― Richard Restak, The Complete Guide to Memory: The Science of Strengthening Your Mind

“Forgetfulness is especially worrying to us because of the fear that our memory failures may be the result of a degenerative brain disease like Alzheimer’s. In most cases, such fears are unfounded: the occasional “senior moment” is commonly experienced by perfectly normal people as they age. Rather than a sign of mental decline, these episodes of temporary forgetfulness may be a side effect of the mountains of information that the brain has taken in and processed over the years.”
― Richard Restak, The Complete Guide to Memory: The Science of Strengthening Your Mind

“The important point is that you can see the loci links with photographic clarity. Best wishes in your efforts to significantly enhance your memory. The sooner you begin applying the principles and techniques suggested in this book, the sooner you will reach that goal. The most important thing? Make memory improvement not just a fanciful wish, but a daily activity. GLOSSARY Amygdala An almond-shaped structure just in front of the hippocampus.”
― Richard Restak, The Complete Guide to Memory: The Science of Strengthening Your Mind

“the “magic number seven” applied to digits, words, pictures, and even complex ideas.”
― Richard Restak, The Complete Guide to Memory: The Science of Strengthening Your Mind

“The take-home message from the Forgotten Baby Syndrome and the bus driver’s near catastrophic experience is that you should be wary whenever you are deviating from your usual routine. At such times monitor yourself, lest your procedural memory routines take over. Think of procedural memory and the habits thus formed as a default state. If you don’t self-monitor, you’ll do what you have always done previously. This can lead to unexpected and unnecessarily tragic disasters. Be alert to this potential memory peril.”
― Richard Restak, The Complete Guide to Memory: The Science of Strengthening Your Mind

“Here is an overview and survey of what we have covered so far: Encoding is the basis for all voluntarily retrievable memory. Without encoding, recall is impossible. All encoding is initially episodic (something happening to you, an episode); if repeated often enough, the information in memory is transferred to semantic memory (general knowledge); or procedural memory (how to do something). Working memory involves maintaining and manipulating information until it’s transferred to long-term memory in one of its three categories (episodic, semantic, and procedural). Here is a diagram illustrating the interrelations. All three of these (episodic, semantic, and procedural) are part of long-term memory.”
― Richard Restak, The Complete Guide to Memory: The Science of Strengthening Your Mind

“Much of our culture is now locked into a mindset known as presentism: An uncritical adherence to present-day attitudes and beliefs, especially the tendency to interpret and judge past events and people in terms of current values and concepts. Presentism, like amnesia for the future, involves a loss of the ability to fully appreciate the myriad ways our current attitudes and beliefs contribute to misjudgments about the past.”
― Richard Restak, The Complete Guide to Memory: The Science of Strengthening Your Mind

“When you place an item in memory, it’s as if you’re sending a message to your future self,” according to Robert Jacobs, a professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Rochester. “This channel has limited capacity, however, and thus it can’t transmit all details of a message. Consequently, a message retrieved from memory at a later time may not be the same as the message placed into memory at the earlier time. That is why memory errors occur.” Jacobs conceives of memory as a kind of communication channel which, like all communication channels, may break down. For instance, the brain is designed to favor filling in details when only the gist of an experience can be recalled. Was the Shelby Mustang I considered buying last month outfitted with a manual or an automatic transmission? If I don’t remember, it’s natural to “mentally fill in the missing details with the most frequent or commonplace properties,” says Jacobs. The car must have been equipped with a manual transmission because I don’t think Shelby ever made a car with an automatic transmission, I conclude, although I’m not all that sure of my memory for this fact and this car could be an exception or a conversion. In J. G. Ballard’s dystopian novel Rushing to Paradise, he writes of the dangers of a “collective amnesia for the future. . . . a willed refusal to face the imminent.” Could this failure in future memory be part of the explanation for our response to the threat of Global Warming?”
― Richard Restak, The Complete Guide to Memory: The Science of Strengthening Your Mind