For compulsions, according to a growing body of scientific evidence, are a response to anxiety. Suffused and overwhelmed by anxiety, we grab hold of any behavior that offers relief by providing even an illusion of control.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.
The conscious act of thinking about one’s thoughts in a different way changes the very brain circuits that do that thinking...
Arguing, after all, is less about seeking truth than about overcoming opposing views.
The mind, of course, is just what the brain does for a living.
Like sand on the beach, the brain bears the footprints of the decisions we have made, the skills we have learned, the actions we have taken.
We look harder for flaws in a study when we don’t agree with its conclusions.
With modern parts atop old ones, the brain is like an iPod built around an eight-track cassette player.
The mind’s cross indexing puts the best librarian to shame.
The mind can store an estimated ioo trillion bits of information compared with which a computer’s mere billions are virtually amnesiac.
Emerging evidence suggests that people who are suffering from depression are unable to recognize novelty.
We cling to compulsions as if to a lifeline, for it is only by engaging in compulsions that we can drain enough of our anxiety to function.
The saddest thing I came to understand in researching and reporting this book is that so many of our behaviors draw us into them not because they bring joy but because they promise to quiet anxiety. But the most heartening thing was the realization that the ability of compulsive behaviors to quiet anxieties great and small is one of the greatest gifts our brains can give us.