I don't know about you, but I find it exhilarating to see how vague psychological notions evaporate and give rise to a physical, mechanistic understanding of the mind, even if it's the mind of the fly.

Sticking wires into the brain is obviously rather crude. It's hard to do in animals that run around, and there is a physical limit to the number of wires that can be inserted simultaneously.

For the longest time, neuroscientists were forced to be passive observers of brain activity.

I never could read science fiction. I was just uninterested in it. And you know, I don't like to read novels where the hero just goes beyond what I think could exist. And it doesn't interest me because I'm not learning anything about something I'll actually have to deal with.

You don't go into space just for the science. Economically, it is not worth it. I think the reason we should be in space is for the exploration; it's the human endeavour.

As far as I'm concerned, raising the bar or encouraging kids in large numbers to be interested in science, I can't think of anything I'd rather see happen.

It was only in the second year of my Ph.D. that I started acting. I wasn't in school plays or anything; I was in bands, but I wasn't cool. There's no such thing as a cool physics person, is there?