Daniel Levitin

Healthy breaks can hit the reset button in your brain, restoring some of the glucose and other metabolic nutrients used up with deep thought. A healthy break is one in which you allow your brain to rest, to loosen its grip on your thoughts. ”

The phrase 'fake news' sounds too playful, too much like a schoolchild faking illness to get out of a test. ”

I don't think I'm always right, but I would like to empower people to come to sound conclusions using a systematic way of looking at things. ”

Anything you care about, from vacation plans to exercise to the best Ethiopian restaurant, is going to be guided by your individual search history. ”

Our brains are very, very good at self-delusion. What happens is, it releases the stress hormone cortisol in the brain, which leads to foggy thinking, so you're not even able to judge well whether you're working well or not. ”

Our species uses music and dance to express various feelings: love, joy, comfort, ceremony, knowledge, and friendship. And each one is distinct and widely recognized within cultures. Love songs cause us to move slowly and fluidly, for example, while songs of joy inspire us to dance in a full-body aerobic way. ”

There are people from lots of different fields in my department. In my lab, they come from computer science, education, psychophysics, psychology, music - and we all work together, and it feels very comfortable. All the careers I've had have been interdisciplinary; working in a studio is like being an engineer and a musician and a therapist. ”

There are not two sides to a story when one side is a lie. Journalists - and the rest of us - must stop giving equal time to things that don't have an opposing side. ”

Two sides to a story exist when evidence exists on both sides of a position. Then, reasonable people may disagree about how to weigh that evidence and what conclusion to form from it. Everyone, of course, is entitled to their own opinion. ”

Every status update you read on Facebook, every tweet or text message you get from a friend, is competing for resources in your brain with important things like whether to put your savings in stocks or bonds, where you left your passport, or how best to reconcile with a close friend you just had an argument with. ”