who we are as a teenager is not simply the result of a choice or an attitude; it is the product of a period of intense and inevitable neural change.

By the time you think the moment occurs, it’s already long gone. To synchronize the incoming information from the senses, the cost is that our conscious awareness lags behind the physical world. That’s the unbridgeable gap between an event occurring and your conscious experience of it.

But visible light constitutes only a tiny fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum – less than one ten-trillionth of it.

Consciousness gets involved when the unexpected happens, when we need to work out what to do next. Although the brain tries to tick along as long as possible on autopilot, it’s not always possible in a world that throws curveballs.

In contrast, humans are able to thrive in many different environments, from the frozen tundra to the high mountains to bustling urban centers. This is possible because the human brain is born remarkably unfinished.

The enemy of memory isn’t time; it’s other memories. Each new event needs to establish new relationships among a finite number of neurons.

As Read Montague points out, “sharks don’t go on hunger strikes”: