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It is hard to see how one could begin to develop a quantum-theoretical description of brain action when one might well have to regard the brain as "observing itself" all the time!
--
Ch. 10, Where Lies the Physics of the Mind?, p. 447

 

Roger Penrose

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"Quantum interference—the crosstalk among similar quantum states—knits the different versions of your brain together."
"You're saying that my consciousness extends across multiple cosmi," I said. "That's a pretty wild statement."
"I'm saying all things do," Orolo said. "That comes with the polycosmic interpretation. The only thing exceptional about the brain is that it has found a way to use this."

 

Neal Stephenson

 

But the reason why the curse works is because all children have brain damage. Now, for those of you without children, let me describe the brain damage. You come into the room with a Coca-cola, you set it down to grab the newspaper. The child comes walking in, picks up the drink, and you say "Give me that! Didn't I tell you not to drink it?" The child says, "Uh-huh." You say, "Tell me what I said." "You said for not for to drink your drink." "Every time I tell you that, don't I? When I have a drink, don't you drink it." "Uh-huh." "Now tell me what I said." "You said for not for to drink your drink!" "That's right!" So you set the drink down, turn to grab the paper, the child picks it up again and quickly starts to drink it! So you say, "Give me that! Didn't I just tell you to..." "Uh-huh." "Then why did you drink it?" "I don't know!"...brain damage!

 

Bill Cosby

 

That's what I hate about the war on drugs. All day long we see those commercials: "Here's your brain, here's your brain on drugs", "Just Say No", "Why do you think they call it dope?" … And then the next commercial is [singing] "This Bud's for yooouuuu." C'mon, everybody, let's be hypocritical bastards. It's okay to drink your drug. We meant those other drugs. Those untaxed drugs. Those are the ones that are bad for you.

 

Bill Hicks

 

The brain is the source of thought. The brain is matter and thought is matter. Can the brain — with all its reactions and its immediate responses to every challenge and demand — can the brain be very still? It is not a question of ending thought, but of whether the brain can be completely still? This stillness is not physical death. See what happens when the brain is completely still.

 

Jiddu Krishnamurti

 

As a brain researcher, I'd started out simply accepting the strictly objective principles of the behaviorist position. In the 1950s and early 1960s, all respectable neuroscientists thought in these terms. In those days, we wouldn't have been caught dead implying that consciousness or subjective experience can affect physical brain processing.
My first break with this thinking — although I certainly didn't see it that way at the time — came in a 1952 discussion of mind-brain theory in which I proposed a fundamentally new way of looking at consciousness. In it, I suggested that when we focus consciously on an object — and create a mental image for example — it's not because the brain pattern is a copy or neural representation of the perceived object, but because the brain experiences a special kind of interaction with that object, preparing the brain to deal with it.
I maintained that an identical feeling or thought on two separate occasions did not necessarily involve the identical nerve cells each time. Instead, it is the operational impact of the neural activity pattern as a whole that counts, and this depends on context — just as the word "lead" can mean different things, depending on the rest of the sentence.

 

Roger Wolcott Sperry