Daniel Levitin

I'm a simple country neuroscientist, not an expert on democracy, but I do know something about how the brain works and how opinion-reinforcing bubbles can distort the picture of reality we build from the information we encounter on a daily basis. ”

Maybe instead of asking political candidates to submit tax returns, we really should be asking to see their brain scans. ”

I became interested in structure when I was in graduate school. How is it that the brain perceives structure in a sometimes disorganized and chaotic world? How and why do we categorize things? Why can things be categorized in so many different ways, all of which can seem equally valid? ”

I became a cognitive psychologist because I met a bunch of teachers I really liked. ”

People have different styles: Some are filers and some are pilers. The people who pile things often know exactly where things are, and they're often just as organized as the people who file things. ”

If we are to appropriate money for roads, we need statistics on how bad our roads really are and, moreover, where more roads will be beneficial - it would be irresponsible to just build them where our gut tells us to. ”

Unscrupulous writers often count on the fact that most people don't bother reading footnotes or tracking down citations. ”

The left brain is responsible for making order out of chaos, for making sense of things in the world that don't always add up. To do this, it often makes up stories, fantastic confabulations in some cases, just to be able to explain what we're experiencing. ”

I'm not a great guitarist, and I'm not a great singer. ”

I've always been interested in peak performance, why some people do better in life than others. ”