577 books
—
761 voters
“Surprisingly, there is a representation of the human hand in Broca’s area, a section of the human brain involved in language processing, speech or sign production, and comprehension. A number of studies have shown that hand/arm gestures and movements of the mouth are linked through a common neural substrate. For example, grasping movements influence pronunciation—and not only when they are executed but also when they are observed. It has also been demonstrated that hand gestures and mouth gestures are directly linked in humans, and the oro-laryngeal movement patterns we create in order to produce speech are a part of this link. Broca’s area is also a marker for the development of language in human evolution, so it is intriguing to see that it also contains a motor representation of hand movements; here may be a part of the bridge that led from the “body semantics” of gestures and the bodily self-model to linguistic semantics, associated with sounds, speech production, and abstract meaning expressed in our cognitive self-model, the thinking self.”
― The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self
― The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self
“Parthenon looked to me like an even number two or four. And even numbers are against my heart--I don't want to have anything with them. They stand too fast on their legs, they're well-ordered, they don't wish to be moved, they're conservative, satisfied. All problems solved, all desires fulfilled, they can be calm. Odd numbers, they have a rhythm familiar to my heart. The life of the odd numbers is not comfortably arranged. They don't like the world as it is, they wish to change it, improve it, push it forward. They stand on one leg, and they have the other one raised, prepared to go on. They are leaving. Where? To the next even number, where they stop for a while, breathe in, and go on marching again.”
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“Religious belief is an attempt to endow your life with deeper meaning and embed it in a positive metacontext—it is the deeply human attempt to finally feel at home. It is a strategy to outsmart the hedonic treadmill. On an individual level, it seems to be one of the most successful ways to achieve a stable state—as good as or better than any drug so far discovered. Now science seems to be taking all this away from us. The emerging emptiness may be one reason for the current rise of religious fundamentalism, even in secular societies. Yes,”
― The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self
― The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self
“Love Poem
ـــــــــ
It's so nice
to wake up in the morning
all alone
and not have to tell somebody
you love them
when you don't love them
any more.”
―
ـــــــــ
It's so nice
to wake up in the morning
all alone
and not have to tell somebody
you love them
when you don't love them
any more.”
―
“The most beautiful idea, perhaps, is that freedom and determinism can peacefully coexist: If our brains are causally determined in the right way, if they make us causally sensitive to moral considerations and rational arguments, then this very fact makes us free. Determinism and free will are compatible.”
― The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self
― The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self
The Brain and Mind
— 4419 members
— last activity Jan 28, 2026 09:00AM
This is a group for readers to recommend and discuss books related to real and/or artificial brains. Categories include but are not limited to: neuros ...more
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